


An Angel’s Blessing

by DrowsyAthena



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, Angel’s first coffee, Bisexual Female Character, Caught in the shower, Character Development, Digging up the past, Disney+ and Chill, F/F, Female Masturbation, First Crush, First Kiss, Flashbacks/backstory, Fluff, Gay angel, Girl Crush, Girlfriends - Freeform, Gods, Guardian Angels, Lesbian Character, Love Triangles, Masturbation for stress relief, Naked Angel, Nudism, Public Nudity, Roommates, Slow Burn, Slow Romance, They always had each other, Urban Fantasy, Wholesome Les Beans, With a Dash of Sexual Nudity Thrown In, casual nudity, disaster bi, how do you even human anyways?, human disaster, non-sexual nudity, things don’t go as planned, useless lesbian
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-10
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-14 11:14:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28669797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrowsyAthena/pseuds/DrowsyAthena
Summary: After a series of bad decisions, a self-centered woman receives a visit from her guardian angel. Misadventures and some gay-ass romance ensue.
Relationships: Human/Angel - Relationship, Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Comments: 27
Kudos: 25





	1. How the Pieces got onto the Floor

It didn’t start as she would have liked it to. Back then, it felt more like the end of a few things.

To start with, it had felt like the end of her relationship with her sister. That was because it was also the end of her relationship with her sister’s husband.

It was one dirty picture that she had sent to him one month ago, that the idiot either didn’t hide, or didn’t hide well enough, and that was it. Weeks and weeks of being careful, telling herself she would end this before it got out of hand, all down the drain.

And she knew this would happen. She had a habit for dragging things out too far. Just far enough for her to get caught.

That utter fucking idiot.

It was a text. From him. Then a phone call, from her. She was crying, her voice was shaking, and there was a hate in her voice that had never been directed at her, before. At her own sister.

She knew what this meant.

“You ruined it. You fucking ruined it. You ruined us and you ruined me, all because you can’t fucking think of anyone but your fucking self. I hope you got what you wanted from it, because you fucking took it from me.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t think that she could. She certainly had no right. Her sister was speaking the truth, and there was nothing she could say to defend herself.

Her sister hung up and she sank deep into the sofa.

Yeon Sa-Rang had been told that she had an angel’s blessing over her life, that her cute childhood, pretty girlhood, and beautiful adulthood were gifts to her granted by the divine. Her parents were converts and immigrants, and they had been both of those things before Sa-Rang had been born, twenty-six years ago, and neither of those things when her thirty-two year old sister was brought into this world. She didn’t get such “nice” things said about her, but Sa-Rang was the baby that God had given them. She always had been. She was always taking things from her sister, it would seem. And her sister, Go-Eun, took it, because that was the lot she was given under that roof.

Maybe it was the fact that it had always been her, and that in her childhood she had known nothing save for the disproportionate love from her parents, that she hadn’t noticed that the same thing hadn’t been afforded to her sister. It wasn’t until she was a teenager, and that Go-Eun was in college that Sa-Rang had fully realized this.

It was on the holidays, when she had returned home, that Sa-Rang had seen her sister, and that she had seen the smile on her face. She was smiling in a way that she never truly had before, when she was at home. When she talked, it was in the bare minimum when it was towards their parents, but when she talked to Sa-Rang, there was more.

Go-Eun had _lived_ by herself. She had been allowed freedom and the room to breath and she took it in and she inhaled like she had never took in air before. She was new. She was herself in a way that she never would have been if she hadn’t left.

And, back then, she didn’t blame Sa-Rang. Not like now, where it was fairly clear that she was some kind of vampiric parasite that only knew how to take whatever was positive about Go-Eun’s life and feed from it.

That was how it looked like from this lightless room as she stared up from her sunken position in the couch and to the ceiling that had been lit only by the headlights leaking through the curtains as cars passed by.

She took in a staggered breath and let it loose like a reverse gasp.

It was the most sisterly they had ever been, and besides now, it was the most sorry that Sa-Rang had ever felt. But she had been happy for Go-Eun. This was how she was meant to be. This was how things should have kept going.

Then, years and years later, years after the wedding, years after the passing of their parents and the inheritance of their fortune, Sa-Rang had slept with Nathan Singer, and Nathan Singer, in turn, fucked her.

This had happened multiple times, and not once had Sa-Rang truly felt guilty about it. Not until she got that last text from him did the full weight of what she had so unrepentantly done fallen on her and crushed her. She stole from Go-Eun, and she stole from her kids the sense of normalcy that they otherwise would have grown up with. There was no way that Go-Eun was going to not divorce Nathan, and the separation would be her fault. Always would be.

This was her last and her greatest failure to Go-Eun. Nothing could top it, nothing could fix it.

She wondered what her parents would think of what their blessed child had done. She thought about this often, the first time she had ever had premarital sex, the first time she had ever had sex with a woman, the first she time she had ever gotten pass-drunk, the first time she ever snorted coke with her friends. It was always in the lease of something she was *supposed* to feel, or something that she would feel under different circumstances, if they were alive. It was a thought that made her feel a bit more alive when she thought it, a bit more sinful than she really was, but this time, it came with guilt and shame.

They always did believe that, when the time came, they would be looking down on her, and they believed that when they were, they would be proud.

How wrong they had to be to believe bullshit like that.

Her eyes still on the ceiling, she said, in a bitter voice numb to tone, “I’m sorry, but this is what you got. Guess you should have loved Go-Eun more.”

No reply. Of course there was no reply. She never had the chance to tell her parents off in their life, and she was all too happy to take their money in death. She had pushed away the last of her family and now she was talking to ghosts. She was bitter at the heavens.

“Whatever angel you said was blessing me, it’s doing a real shitty job at it,” she said, rubbing her nose with her sleeve.

She didn’t know if she was going to get any sleep tonight. She couldn’t see that she would. Didn’t feel fair, but she put herself down on the couch and put her head on her folded hands, and she closed her eyes. She cried messily, but it ultimately led to her exhaustion.

She was asleep.

Yeon Sa-Rang lived alone in a small apartment paid for by her parents’ money. She paid the rest of her way via a part-time job at a local book shop where she sat behind a desk and she stared at shelves, sometimes interrupted by the very occasional customer interrupted wherever her train of thought was wandering. It didn’t pay extremely well, but it allowed her a cushion so that she wouldn’t deplete her inheritance too terribly much, it was close enough to her apartment that she didn’t need to drive and pay for gas, and it gave her the time to write, or procrastinate, as she was more wont to do.

Sa-Rang wanted to be a famous author and a renowned personality, and she wanted to skip every step in between where she was now and what her endgame was. It was a goal that occupied her mind for most waking hours, and she was quite good at walking tall like she was already someone worth paying attention to.

This bravado escaped her when the alarm woke her up at a time which felt far too early, but in actuality was just enough room to get ready for her next shift.

She wanted to call in sick and wallow in her misery. Then, she figured that she didn’t need to be left alone for too long. She needed something to occupy the day. She showered, dressed, and stepped out, walking the few blocks to work, keeping her head down and getting lost in the monotony of her steps. She felt like a zombie, which was at least better than feeling the rest of what was going through her head last night. She pushed through the glass doors, wrote her time in, in the back —rounding down for whatever extra few cents those minutes would give her— and then sat herself down behind the counter, staring ahead, towards the door, instead of towards the shelves. Only sensation was the smell of the coffee machine they kept in the back behind closed doors.

She wasn’t alone. Whenever she was working, it was almost always that she was the one behind the counter, acting as the pretty face for the shop. She could sell a book and, given enough time, creat a regular out of an ordinary customer. It so happened that she was a terrific flirt and —in the cases of romantic incompatibility— pretty good at making it seem like she’d be a good friend, as contested as that claim would be now. but for some reason she couldn’t bring herself to put on that face and play that part. She was going to be as still as she was allowed for her entire shift and when it was time to go home she would break into the wine and drink out from the bottle until she could drink no longer.

She welcomed the idea with a little bit of excitement, but quickly corrected the feeling. She wasn’t finished with herself, yet. If she could manage, she wouldn’t be finished for a long time.

The door behind the counter opened. She didn’t turn. She knew who he was. She didn’t want to look him in the eyes. She didn’t want to be seen by him. Not like this.

“Morning,” he said, chipper voice like Sa-Rang expected from him.

She didn’t respond.

“Morning?” He tried again.

“Morning,” Sa-Rang muttered.

He walked over to her side and looked down on her. “Jesus, Sa-Rang. You okay?”

“Been better,” she said.

“Hungover?”

“Just about,” she said. Better he believed that than heard the truth of it.

“You look like a mess.”

“Thank you,” Sa-Rang said, blinking and letting her eyes linger shut before she opened them again. Still raw from crying and sensitive to the light, it was a feeling like being hungover, but given the option between the two, she would have drowned in all of her liquor last night.

“Sorry. Just saying you look like you could use a few more hours of sleep.”

“Hmph. Kay. Willing to send me home, then?” Her voice had a natural fry to it. She attributed it to a brief stint of smoking as a teenager, but the truth was that she had spent a long enough time affecting it upon her voice that it took no effort to keep it there, anymore.

“Of course not,” he said with a cheery smile as he clapped his hand over her shoulder. “You’re not getting off that easily, honey.

Devin Julian was tall, with wide shoulders and a wide waist. At 6’4, he dwarfed the 5’2 Sa-Rang to the extent that it made her look childish in spite of the lines under her eyes and her otherwise mature countenance. He had dark, dark skin and close cut hair, and was the sort of man who could wear pride-flag suspenders over a button-up shirt every day and make it work. He was preternaturally kind and loudly jolly to the point where it was rather annoying to Sa-Rang when she was on her worst moods. Moods that haven’t ever been as bad as they were for her today.

He was good-natured, and for that much she could envy him. He had the good sense to know how and when to do the right thing and Sa-Rang could use a bit of that.

“Coffee?” He offered, nodding his head back to the door. “I can make it for you.”

“Thank you, Dev. Black, please.”

“Best things are,” he teased. Kind of funny, since he put enough cream in his coffee to nearly eliminate all of the color in it. “Be right back, dear.”

Another gentle touch to her shoulder. She liked it. She felt warm from it. If she didn’t steel herself properly, she’d probably start crying from it. It felt so nice, after last night, to know that she didn’t destroy *everything* around her, but she also knew she didn’t deserve the kindness. Not yet. She needed to go through a drought, until there was almost nothing left.

As much as she wanted that warmth...

She breathed in and she held that breath, until she felt it, until she saw spots in her eyes. She wanted something else to focus on other than her fluctuating emotions.

God, she wished this could just be over with. She’d start praying again if only she could just wake up and the worst parts of this were over.

A steaming mug was set down in front of her. She looked up and forced a smile towards Devon. “Thanks, Dev,” she said, taking it and breathing it in. Smelled nice. She needed this.

She wished it could leave her mind for just a bit. She was tired of thinking the same thoughts time and time again, she just wanted to get on towards the interesting bits again. The parts that got her in trouble.

She hoped she would still have the stomach for it, eventually, though she didn’t know if she would deserve it.

She drank the coffee and set it down.

“Better now?”

*No.* “Yeah. I do.”

“Great. Now buck up camper. I think we’re in for a long one today.” He turned and went back to organizing the boxes in the back.

“Goodie.” Fingers tapped to the glass on the desk, rings clicked on the hard surface and left tiny little marks to be buffed off, later.

She put in her time of leaving, rounding up this time. Devin had been gone for two hours by the time she had finished, and her replacement had been there for an hour and a half.

She was walking again, now in the evening. She hadn’t eaten this entire time. She had forgotten her lunch, and the only thing she had consumed was the coffee. She only felt the gnawing emptiness in her stomach as she was walking home. She thought for a bit if there was anything she could make herself at home. There was ramen, mostly.

Sa-Rang decided that she would probably be better off eating out today. The longer she was in public, the more incentive she was given to keep her shit together. She walked on past her apartment and a few more blocks onward, walking into a cafe, ordering a latte with a double-shot and a chicken caesar wrap. She sat in silence, scrolling her socials until the plate was in front of her.

Halfway into her meal, her phone buzzed and shook on the table.

A text. From Nathan.

_We’re Separating..._

She stared down at it until the screen dimmed back to black. Her heart sank, then started beating, heavy and hard.

She tried to tell herself that she knew this was going to happen, that she had been preparing for this to happen... but to see Nathan texting her about it...

She lifted the phone, opened it, her fingers hovering over the keyboard as she tried to think of what she could possibly say to reply. She had nothing.

She could just leave it alone...

But she didn’t. She took action, her first impulse.

She blocked his number and she set the phone down.

Inhale, and then, “fuck...”

That wasn’t going to fix anything. It might even make things worse, but... she couldn’t do anything. She didn’t have anything to say to him. She wished he would just do what she was doing and just cut himself out from the rest of the world.

She looked down at the remaining half of her wrap. She had lost her appetite, and the shaky way she was feeling told her that she was at risk of losing a lot more.

She put it neatly into a takeaway box and walked back home.

Box thrown haphazardly against the counter, she rushed to the bathroom and leaned heavily against the sink, looking into the mirror.

Sa-Rang asked it, “Who the hell are you?” and looked hard and long into her own eyes.

The word “vampire” came to mind again, drawing people in and stealing their positive energies.

Her fingers squeezed the rim of the sink. “Well, I hope you’re proud of me,” she said, looking up. “I hope the angel you gave to me and not to her did exactly what you wanted it, to, god damn it. I hope you realize what you and that fucking angel did to this family.” Her voice was degrading, breaking down, as with the walls she had set up to hold her tears back all this time. “You drove her away and you did... you did *this* to me.” She turned away, back into the living room, to the kitchen, to the fridge, where she pulled a quarter-drunk bottle of moscato, pulled the cork, and set herself at the table, taking a heavy swig from it. Sweet, smooth. She took another swig, and another.

_Are you really going to pity yourself like this?_

“Fuck off,” she said, then paused.

That wasn’t her voice in her head. It wasn’t her thoughts. She looked at her bottle. She hadn’t drank nearly enough to start hearing voices, and when she in the past, she couldn’t remember any such voices even then.

_This is about more than just you, you know. You’re not the one who you hurt. You were responsible for your own actions. You did this knowing what you were doing, and now you’re going to center this whole situation on yourself and how you feel about it. Do you think the problem here is less how other people thought of you and more how you think about yourself?_

The voice was feminine, soft, melodious. It was caring in a way that *felt* motherly, but also youthful in a way that contradicted that. Sa-Rang couldn’t say that she’s heard this voice before, not in a way where she could place it to a face, but at the same time, it sounded intensely familiar. It drove her crazy how she couldn’t pinpoint why that was.

“What is this? Who are you?”

_I am your angel._

“My...” she shook her head and scoffed. “This is bullshit. I’m dreaming. This is some kind of delusion... or something. I’m not in the right mind, it has to be that.” She touched her hand to her forehead. She didn’t feel off. She didn’t feel dizzy. She was still in that emotional high of a spirited crying session.

_I’ll let you believe that._

What the fuck did she mean by that?

“Okay, well tell me,” she said, looking up, again at the ceiling and the passing lights. “If you’re my angel, why did you let this happen? Why did you let me become this?”

_I blessed you, Yeon Sa-Rang. What you did with those blessings was entirely your choice. You used some of them to ale friends, get good grades, and get nice jobs. You used others to seduce the man that your sister married and split up a family._

Sa-Rang’s face became hot as an anger rose within her chest. How dare this... this _delusion_ tell her... tell her the truth like that?

“Blessings?” She asked. “What the fuck kind of blessings did you give me? I didn’t feel any of them, I certainly don’t know how to use any of them. Where the fuck were these so-called blessings?”

_They were my blessings, from me, to you. Charm and wit, among whatever else I decided to send down upon you when I thought that you in need of it. These were gifts that you were allowed to choose how to use, and you have certainly made some choices in your life._

Sa-Rang opened her mouth, but was interrupted by the alleged angel.

_It’s hard to look at you like this. I tried my best on you, really. I didn’t care exactly how you used my blessings, but to see you fall apart like this when you’re forced to face the consequences of your actions is truly a sad sight to behold. You have been steadily leading yourself to moments like this throughout your entire life. It confuses me that when something like this had finally happened, you’re surprised that it had._

Sa-Rang looked down from the ceiling and onto the tabletop. She didn’t have much to say to that.

_And then you blamed me, and I took that personally._

“What?”

_You blamed this on your parents, and you blamed this on their ‘fucking angel.’ Before that, you were speaking up to your parents and you said that whatever angel they said was blessing you was doing a ‘shitty job.’ You remember, back at the mirror. It wasn’t even thirty minutes ago. I know it’s not the booze that’s challenging your memory, you drink more than that out of sheer habit._

Sa-Rang slid the bottle on the table further away from herself. She then looked at the bottle for a few seconds, leaned close, and pulled it back to her. This wasn’t real. It was some kind of stress-induced voice in her head. It was the guilt coming at her in a different medium.

“I’m falling apart,” she muttered.

_I’ve noticed._

Sa-Rang clenched her teeth. “So what now, ‘angel?’ I insulted you so now you’re going to just watch me from above as I fall apart? What’s the point of even talking to me?”

Nothing was said for a bit after her question. For a few seconds, Sa-Rang was hopeful that the voice had left her —not that it had ever really been there, just that it had just... worn-off or whatever. But alas, it wasn’t so.

_You’re right._

“Excuse me?”

_You’re right. This isn’t helping you. I am sorry._

“You’re _sorry_?”

_I am. You’re my responsibility, and I had gotten upset with you. This is not productive. You obviously need help, and you’re obviously unable to help yourself._

“ _Hey._ ”

_I am speaking the truth._

“What does that even mean? What are you going to do?” Sa-Rang asked. She couldn’t believe that she was humoring this voice, but so long as she was hearing it, she was going to respond.

_I’m considering things._

“Consider taking me back to before I... before I slept with Nathan. How about that.”

_It doesn’t work like that._

“What do you mean ‘it doesn’t work like that?’ You’re an angel, right? Make it work like that.”

_I can’t ‘make it work like that.’ I’m an angel, not a god, and even then, shifting the flow of time is extremely finicky, and is often advised against, ever for use by such a high authority._

“God?”

_Gods. Quite a few of them. You might have heard of some, but that is neither here nor there. How might I more properly help you in your life is what’s relevant._

Sa-Rang rolled her eyes, crossing her arms and leaning back into her chair, knees raised so that they were now pressing against the table. The voice was quiet for a good amount of time, but this time Sa-Rang didn’t get her hopes up in believing she was gone. She’d be more surprised if this was indeed the last she’d hear of her ‘angel.’

“Well?”

_Well what?_

“Well, how are you going to help me?”

_I’m thinking._

“Thinking for how much longer?”

_Are you in a hurry? Is there perhaps someplace else where you would like to wallow?_

“Uncalled for.”

_You were calling for me. I am exactly what is called for._

“Well, what about it I want to sleep?”

_Then you may sleep. I will still be here. Still thinking if I haven’t yet come to any conclusion as to the problem that you pose._

“Where’s ‘here’ for you?”

_The heavens._

“The heavens... of course...” Sa-Rang mumbled. “So you just watch me?”

_Angels usually do. When we have humans, we watch those humans. You’re mine, so I watch you._

_Creepy,_ Sa-Rang thought. She didn’t like the idea of being under watch by anyone, least of all a disembodied voice of an alleged angel. God, why was she still humoring this. She wasn’t real, she was just... she wasn’t real, that’s all there was to it. Just her fevered mind.

She needed to get back on her old meds once this was all over. First thing after work tomorrow, she’d hit up the pharmacy.

“Think of anything yet?” Sa-Rang asked.

_I am still working on it. Be patient._

“How patient do I have to be?” Sa-Rang asked.

_As patient as you need to be, although I will try and have haste, lest you go out before I come up with a solution and somehow manage to make matters worse._

“ _Hey_ ,” Sa-Rang snapped. “Stop with that.”

_Stop with what?_

“Those little snips of yours, judging me,” Sa-Rang said, suddenly reminded of why she had fallen off of her parents’ religion so quickly after she had left the house. “Must be awful fucking easy for you to make those kind of judgements looking down at me from whatever cloud you’re hiding behind up there in your ‘heavens.’”

The angel didn’t respond, save for a _Hmm..._

“Hmm?”

_I think I have an idea._

“An idea? What is it?”

_You’ll find out. I just need to get it approved, first._

“Approved? By who??”

_This will not take too long. Just sit tight and try not to cause any more damage to your surroundings while I’m gone._

“Wait, what? You’re just going to leave me like this? After... after all this bullshit heaven and angels stuff you were talking to me about?”

_I will be back. Sit still and stay calm._

“But wait, I—”

_Goodbye._

“I still have questions, I still...” she stopped herself. “What the fuck am I doing? Who the fuck am I talking to?”

No answer.

“I’m going insane. I’m falling apart.” She put her hands to her head and ran her fingers through her hair.

Still nothing. Everything was quiet. She was alone. She had always been alone, she told herself. There was no one else with her. There was no voice, and that voice that did not exist certainly did not belong to an angel. Certainly not _her_ angel.

She fixated on the bottle of moscato, the label facing her. She was staring into it as if it had eyes, and as if it was staring back at her.

She shook her head. She really shouldn’t be drinking any more, now. Especially after... whatever the fuck _that_ was that just happened. It was... extremely tempting, and then...

She reached, took the bottle, and drained it empty. She let out a gasp as she pulled the drink from her lips and set the drink onto the table. She barely felt it. Not anymore than she usually felt the booze. She would be tipsy, for sure, and she’d be drowsy enough for it to help her get to sleep.

She looked up.

“Hello?” She said.

Nothing.

“Hellooooo?”

The angel said nothing.

“Pffuh... that’s right. Goodbye ‘angel.’” She said. “Good riddance, you judgmental... judgmental...” she lost where she was going with that, the sentence dying off and Sa-Rang was left unsure of where she had even begun to get here.

She felt a bit better, though. Better probably wasn’t the right way to describe it, however. She was tired and distracted, which was enough for her to decided it was exactly late enough to go to bed without feeling the guilt of turning in too early. She slipped out of her pants and into a comfy sweater, and wrapped herself in the covers. She closed her eyes, she felt like she was rocking on a small boat at sea. It was comforting when it wasn’t kind of sickening. It lulled it until she couldn’t tell how the time was passing, and she couldn’t quite remember what it was that made her feel so terrible. She settled down, until she settled into an easy sleep. Figured, she thought before she was fully gone, that she couldn’t muster the kind of quality guilt that would allow her to feel sleepless over what she had done. Selfish as always, she was going to sleep like a baby. Well... she’ll let that happen, of course, and when she woke up, she’ll chastise herself about it on her way to work.

Long fucking days. She couldn’t wait until she was far enough from them that she could pretend that things were back to normal.

Just a few more... nights... like this...

Woke up. Showered. Dressed. Cereal with milk. Out the door, same path. She was feeling better, at least for the moments where she was keeping herself busy. She thought for a bit that maybe the last two nights hadn’t happened, but sure enough, when she checked her phone, Nathan was still a blocked number.

Sa-Rang considered unblocking him, even texting him, but she didn’t know what to say, or if it was even a good idea. It might be, just to get a better handle on the situation.

She made it to the store, behind the counter, eyes forward.

“You look better,” Devon said. “Get some rest?”

“Some,” Sa-Rang said, trying to put up a convincing enough smile to give herself some space away from any potential interrogation about what it was that had brought her down so low yesterday.

“Need some coffee?” He asked.

“Please. Cream and sugar, this time,” Sa-Rang said. She felt lighter on her feet the more that she spoke. She knew what this was. It was the way that she operated. Fast, smooth talking, putting herself into different head spaces and even different ‘characters’ to suit her needs. She always thought she would have made a great actress if only she had that kind of passion. The more she pretended she was okay and the more she was able to convince others that that was the case, the more smoothly she was able to proceed with the act, up and to the point where she was able to fall under the sway.

“Cream and sugar,” he nodded, then sang, as he walked away, “ _cream and su-ga_.”

She smiled, and she had meant it. When she realized she was smiling like that, it was as if a pin had pricked the corners of her mouth. She shouldn’t be doing _that_.

The smile fell from her face, and Sa-Rang started tapping at the surface of her desk with her fingernails, along to the tune of the Train song that was playing through the speakers. A song that she had heard a hundred times too many and would do anything to make sure that she never heard it again, but for now, it was a nice distraction. Nice probably wasn’t the exact right word, but it was still a distraction, and she would take it.

She needed another smile. One that was just fake enough that she wouldn’t be taken in by it so easily.

“Here, honey,” he said, passing the mug delicately over to Sa-Rang. She took it by the handle and still she could tell that it was hot to the touch. Devon had big hands and thick skin, and he was a very hands-on person in a way where he seemed to trade hobbies like woodworking and auto-repair around whenever he got bored. The man had some thick calluses.

“Thanks,” she said, setting it down to wait for it to cool.

“You look distracted.”

“Do I?” Sa-Rang asked, silently cursing the fact that Devon always knew what it was that she was ‘looking like,’ and the fact that he couldn’t seem to keep the thoughts to himself.

“Just a lot on my mind.”

“What kind of ‘a lot?’”

“Just a lot,” Sa-Rang said, quickly looking back on the angel she was talking to. She was definitely talking to something back then, and, barring some possibilities that she didn’t want to confront right now, she was definitely talking to herself.

“Still. You’re looking better.” He gently touched his fist to her shoulder. He picked up a box in the back and took it to the classics section to unpack. She watched.

She always felt so fake around him, and as much as she loved him, she was always kind of relieved when he finally clocked out. Today she was counting down the minutes, and after he left, she was counting again, towards the end of her own shift. She left minutes early, and rounded up to the nearest ten.

She had the TV on while she was at home. She did not know what was on the tv, but she was actively scrolling through her Twitter. She didn’t know what she was reading because she was barely paying attention, just scrolling for the sake of motion. It had been like that for about two hours since she cracked open her leftovers from yesterday.

No voices, so that was nice. Sa-Rang would be lying if she said she hadn’t tried to see if her angel was still watching over her by sending up a few ‘hellos’ and ‘are you theres.’ Of course she didn’t respond.

Exhale.

It would have been kind of nice, though. Kind of romantic to have known that she had an angel watching over her. Maybe if she was capable of making better decisions for herself, she would have actually been grateful.

She put the phone down on top of the coffee table and reclined on the sofa, drawing her legs to her chest and her chin to her knees. Commercials were on and she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was interrupting or even what channel she was on.

The commercials hadn’t finished when there was a knock on the door. Sa-Rang looked over, her eyebrows arched. No idea who it could be besides a neighbor, and her neighbors never knocked.

She looked down at herself. She was presentable, she supposed. Sweatpants and a t-shirt with the Maruchan logo on it, minimal coffee stains. She still didn’t like to be seen like this.

“Hello?” Sa-Rang called, then cringed. Probably shouldn’t have done that. Probably should have just stayed quiet and waited for the visitor to go away.

To her admitted relief, a feminine voice answered.

“Yeon Sa-Rang?”

She knew her name? And the voice was familiar. Very familiar... very recently familiar...

Oh no... it couldn’t be...?

Sa-Rang stood up and looked around for a suitable object, seeing an umbrella by the door and deciding that that would do. She inched towards the door, towards the umbrella, and said, in as calm a voice as she could manage, “Who is this?”

“Who do you think this is?” The voice sounded different. Must have been that it was on the other side of the door instead of on the inside of her head.

“That’s not an answer,” Sa-Rang said, picking up the umbrella and holding it behind her body, hoping that she had retained the muscle memory from her high school years of playing softball. Pity she was mostly a pitcher.

“I’m your angel, Yeon Sa-Rang.”

“Shit.”

“Are you surprised?”

“You’re not supposed to be real,” Sa-Rang said.

“Very sorry to disappoint you. May I come inside? It was rather difficult getting here and I would like to rest.”

“Try back in the heavens, or wherever you came from.” Sa-Rang couldn’t believe that this was happening. This had to be some elaborate joke, somebody set something up in her apartment where they could transmit their voice over to her through a microphone... though she quite clearly remembered only hearing the voice inside of her head.

“I can’t get back into heaven,” said the ‘angel.’ “Not until I help you get better.”

“What... what do you mean by that?”

“I have requested that I be sent down to aid in your reform. A council of gods have accepted my request, but only on the condition that I cannot return to the heavens unless I can prove that I have made you a better person.”

“What— why the fuck would you do something like that?”

“Because I’m your angel, and you’re my human. I have been doing the least that I could do for most of your life, now it is only fair that I do the most.”

Sa-Rang blinked.

“Now may you please let me in?”

“Oh... I have no idea what the hell is even happening...” Sa-Rang said, running her fingers through her hair. She always thought that she had an open mind, but that was so much easier said before you were confronted with something that actually required your mind to be wide-fucking-open.

“If you let me in, we can sit at your table, drink some coffee, and I can explain it very slowly to you.”

Sa-Rang looked over to the coffee table, where she had left the phone. She considered running over and calling the cops, but...

“Okay,” Sa-Rang said after taking a deep breath. Her heart was pounding. “I— I’m letting you in... just don’t try anything funny.”

“I promise I will be very delicate with your current state,” the angel said, and as much as Sa-Rang didn’t want to be drawn in by this, by her, there was something in her voice that made Sa-Rang want to believe her.

She reached forth, turned the knob, and opened the door.

When the door was open, she didn’t exactly know what to expect, but she certainly wasn’t expecting what it was that ended up being in front of her.

She looked completely human, albeit absurdly beautiful. She was a redhead, with alabaster skin and freckles on her cheeks. Her eyes were a cool blue, her nose was straight and pert, cheeks round, brows perfectly sculpted, lashes lush and full. She had a naturally pouty expression, her lips were glistening pink. Her hair was wavy, and cascaded freely behind her, and framed her beautiful face perfectly. If this face was all that Sa-Rang had opened the door to, it would have been enough to stop her dead in her tracks, but that wasn’t the least of it.

She was also totally, unashamedly naked, completely uncovered and exposed in full view of Sa-Rang. She could see everything, and without thinking about what she was doing, she took everything in. Her gently sloping shoulders and athletically-sculpted arms, her delicate hands resting against her smooth, uncovered hips. Her distractingly massive pair of breasts that rested beautifully to the excess of gravity placed upon them, freckled and peaked with two plump nipples. Her stomach, not completely flat, with a nice roundness to it. Her hairless pussy and fat clit evident even without the spread of her legs. Her beautifully muscled legs, and her thighs that were just on the cusp of touching with each other with her current relaxed posture.

Sa-Rang couldn’t think of a woman she has ever seen that had struck her the same was as this alleged angel has with her beauty. She was without a word, for the sheer audacity of this sight, and her mouth was left agape as she searched futilely for what she was supposed to do or say, next.

“Are you finished staring at me so I may come inside?” The alleged angel asked.

Sa-Rang let out an involuntary sputter. “I—I—I—” _fuck, what the hell is this_? “C—come in.” She said, backing away and letting the angel pass her. She watched her walk. Her eyes were on her glorious ass as it jiggled just so slightly with each step, but she also noticed how her back was fairly muscular as well.

The angel sat at the kitchen table like she knew where it was, folded her hands on top of each other, on the tabletop, and turned slightly to face Sa-Rang, her heavy breasts swaying just so that they demanded Sa-Rang’s complete attention.

“Well,” the alleged angel said, “are you going to make me some coffee?”


	2. The Angel in Front of Her

When Yeon Sa-Rang was seventeen, she had went on a vacation with a friend to that friend’s family’s beach house. It was a pleasant, if uneventful weekend, up until the last night of her stay.

Heartbroken that she would have to leave the beach tomorrow and return to a home that, from a distance, seemed so much more lackluster and dull than even a quiet stay by the shore, Sa-Rang decided that she wanted to say goodbye to it, alone. She snuck out of her window, in her hoodie and her sweats, with her swimsuit underneath, a beach towel in a canvas bag. She unrolled the towel in front of the beach, feet away from where the sea was reaching for her, lazily, and then retreating into itself. She was sitting with her legs crossed underneath her, hands to the side. She felt privileged to be here, to witness the quietness that was the beach past midnight. She could only see by the light of the moon, but under that light, this whole beach looked like it was a completely different world from the one she was sunning on in the morning. Just being here, taking it in, it felt more serene than she ever had. It felt like there was a ray of positive energy focusing straight onto her from overhead.

Like it was pouring down from the heavens, just for her.

She breathed it in, sitting still. It was like meditation. Eventually, she stood up, rolled up the legs of her sweats, and waded into the water. She only wanted to stand calf-deep in the ocean.

The water was cold, but with the benefit of being more than a few years away from that day, she considered it absolutely freezing.

She stood still, the sea foam wrapping around her calves and sending a shiver up her spine because she normally hated the sensation. Here, she was willing to ignore it and let it happen to her. Probably never again, after this. She was for certain that it had never happened again, nowadays. Never had the chance. Never gave herself the chance.

If you would have asked her back then, Sa-Rang would have said that it would have been terribly romantic if the ocean had just decided to take her, here and now.

That was before the ocean tried to take her.

The tide had pushed forth more powerfully, forcing her to take a step back to regain her balance. “Shit,” she said, when she thought that the most of her problems was the fact that she got her sweats damp with salt water.

Then things accelerated.

The ocean pulled back hard, the water hitting her from behind like it was a solid force. Her mouth opened, and air escaped, but no words, not even an exclamation left her lips. Her feet parted with the sand for just a moment, but that moment was all that was needed for everything to start spiraling out of control.

She fell forward, face crashing through the water. She couldn’t see and she could barely hear. She couldn’t make sense of anything and everything she had tried to do was futile. There was nothing to grab onto, and she couldn’t manage to swim under her own power. She was suspended, and pulled into the throes of the ocean’s tide, about to be swept out into sea.

Her head surfaced, she gasped for air, tried to scream, and she was pulled back in, again and again as the riptide was determined to collect her and keep her.

One last surfacing, and she gasped out, hoping against all odds that something would happen, something would save her, and that all she needed was one more lungful of air to survive to get to that miracle.

She had that lungful, but her vision still spotted and blurred. She was soon out, unconscious in the sea.

She woke up in her bed in the morning, in the clothes she had snuck out in. They were soaked and clinging to her skin, and she was surrounded by the wide, dark stain of seawater in her sheets, hair stiff and splayed out on the pillow. She was freezing, but nothing hurt.

And she was alive.

Sa-Rang immediately tried to rationalize that last night had been a nightmare, but that didn’t explain how her clothes and the sheets were so wet with what was obviously sea water.

Maybe it was a good Samaritan who had seen her get pulled into sea, and chased after her. This was disproven as soon as she stepped into the living room, and nobody gave any indication that they knew what happened last night. She did have to explain why her bed was a mess, and why she was a mess, but she managed. She couldn’t remember the exact lie that she told, but she did remember that it came to her quickly and easily, as if she had rehearsed it a while ago.

She never told anyone about that day, when she almost drowned, and sometimes, she herself wasn’t even convinced that it actually happened. This didn’t stop her from avoiding stepping into the sea ever again, since then. She missed it, but every time her feet touched the tide, she was forced to remember her near-death experience.

She tried not to think about it.

Present day, Yeon Sa-Rang spent upwards of twenty seconds trying to peel one coffee filter from the other, fighting her shaking hands as she tried to wrap her mind around the fact that there was an absurdly gorgeous, extremely naked woman who claimed she was an angel sitting on one of her chairs —without the separating barrier of a towel at that— waiting for coffee.

Sa-Rang pinched her forearm when she was sure that the naked angel wasn’t looking. She felt the sharp pain, and there was no amount of closing her eyes willing herself awake that she could do to make that happen. This was the real world, this was really happening, and she was stuck with it. With her.

She looked over to the angel. She was waiting calmly, eyes on her hands. If it weren’t for the fact of how incredibly obvious it was, and how easy it was for Sa-Rang to fall into the trap of staring, you’d almost not notice that she was naked. She had a certain composure to her that made her look like the most clothed person in the room.

But she wasn’t. She very much wasn’t, and the reality of it was that it was making Sa-Rang’s face hot and her heart skip some beats.

Coffee would help with that, of course.

She finally managed to peel the coffee filter away from its siblings. Relief flooded into her. She was so frazzled that this felt like a win for her.

She went along with the rest of the process without a hitch and pressed the start button. Hot water started moving, bubbling. She liked the sound of a coffee maker starting up. It was like an aural safe space for her.

“Smells nice,” the naked angel said.

Sa-Rang pursed her lips. “Is there... um... something uh— a name that I can call you?” She asked. She needed to file her under something else other than ‘naked angel’ if the following exchange was going to happen without her losing her mind.

“My name?”

“You have one, right? You’re not just called ‘Yeon Sa-Rang’s angel’ or whatever, I hope?” She did not want to be put into one of those situations where she had to come up with a name on the spot for an entire fully grown celestial being.

“You may call me Siofra.”

“I _may_ call you? That’s not your name?”

“You lack the nature of being to properly pronounce or even hear my angelic name,” Siofra said.

“Fair,” Sa-Rang mumbled. She would have liked to hear Siofra try, if only because whatever noise would come out of her mouth might be enough proof that she needed to know that this was really happening.

Regardless, onto the next most pressing topic. She was hesitant to bring it up, because once she did, she was probably going to be cut off from the most breathtaking sight she could recall ever absorbing, but it only felt right to broach the subject.

“So, um... would you like some clothes or maybe a towel?” Sa-Rang asked, taking quick looks at her —trying to look into her eyes but somehow ending up off the mark each time— and past her as she tried to maintain a balanced composure.

Realistically speaking, it would probably have to be a towel, too. Siofra appeared to be almost six feet tall, and her dimensions would most certainly not be contained by anything that the petite Sa-Rang wore. It would be something else to gawk at, of course, in a different way this time.

“No thank you,” Siofra said.

“I... what? Are you sure?”

“I am sure.”

“But... but you’re naked...”

“I am aware of that,” Siofra said.

“But... are you really sure?”

“Why are you so insistent that I put on clothes?” Siofra asked. “From my understandings the amount of times you have masturbated to the sight of a naked woman on the computer is so high that I cannot even fathom a guess as to the number.”

Sa-Rang blushed furiously. How dare she watch her during her... special alone times...

Or she was bluffing. It wouldn’t be taking that much of a leap to assume that she watched some porn in her free time. And if Siofra was at all aware of the way Sa-Rang was staring at her, it could probably be assumed that she was interested in women. _Very_ interested, more and more so the longer she stared at Siofra. She could count the individual freckles on the woman’s tits and be happy doing it...

She shook her head. She was getting sidetracked.

“I— what I do in my— I don’t need you to tell—” she had no idea how to respond to that in a way where she was going to keep her dignity intact. There were simply no words to begin with.

But... Siofra smiled. It was very slight, just the barest millimeter of movement in the corner of her lips.

“You think this is funny?” Sa-Rang asked.

“A little bit. Yes, I do,” Siofra said. “I must say, it is very... interesting to be able to interact with you, finally.”

“Yeah. Very interesting, I’m sure.”

“It is,” Siofra said.

“Siofra?” Sa-Rang said.

“Yes, Yeon Sa-Rang?”

“Just Sa-Rang, please,” Sa-Rang said. “I, um...” those nipples were so pink, and the way that they pointed downwards with the sag of her breasts... “Siofra. I have to ask you to prove to me that you’re actually my angel.”

“Prove it to you?” Siofra asked. “How so? The gods have taken away many of my angelic powers, and they will only return to me pending on your progress towards becoming a better person.”

“Convenient,” Sa-Rang said.

“It is the truth.”

“Well, what ‘powers’ do you still have?”

“Longevity. And I do not require sustenance.”

“That’s a hard thing to prove,” Sa-Rang said.

“You can just watch me not eat for a long time. I would still like that cup of coffee however,” Siofra suggested, and Sa-Rang was not sure if she was joking or not.

“I don’t have that kind of time,” Sa-Rang said.

“There are other ways for me to prove to you that I am what I am,” Siofra said.

“Such as?”

“I’ve been watching you,” Siofra said. “For your whole life. Not every moment, mind you, I do find the time to look away and tend to my own devices, but I’ve seen enough.”

“Like?” Sa-Rang asked.

Siofra closed her eyes. “forgive me, I have quite a bit of trouble recalling things in this human-adjacent body.”

“Take your time...” Sa-Rang said, unsure of where this was going to go.

“Ah. I know,” Siofra said.

“Yeah?” Sa-Rang crossed her arms and tried to look like she wasn’t nervous. Trying to keep nonchalant.

“Do you remember when you almost drowned on the beach at night?” Siofra asked, and everything froze and spun around Sa-Rang.

Sa-Rang took a step back and steadied herself against the counter. She didn’t say anything. She blinked a few times and Siofra was watching her process what had just happened, seeming to understand the power of the bombshell she just dropped.

“No... no chance you know that. There was nobody there, nobody saw me, and I told nobody about it... I...”

“You weren’t sure that it even happened, were you?” Siofra asked.

“I... no. I wasn’t...”

“And you still let it effect how you went on to live your life.”

Sa-Rang swallowed. “How...?”

“I told you. I’ve been watching you.”

“Then... then you know how I ended up in that bed?”

“Of course I do,” Siofra said. “I was the one who pulled you from the sea.”

The silence between them was punctuated only by the coffee maker’s beeping to make it known that the pot was full.

“You...”

Siofra nodded. “It was me. I saw you drowning, and I begged a god to let me descend and grant you a miracle. You almost died, Yeon Sa-Rang. It was a sure thing.”

“I... can’t believe it. You... I... you’re really an angel, then?”

“I have been.”

Sa-Rang wiped her tired eyes with the sleeve of her sweater. “God... I can’t believe it... none of this makes sense.”

“It will soon. I promise,” Siofra said. “I’ll help you through it. I’m here to help you through a lot of things, Yeon Sa-Rang.”

“You... yeah... what do you mean by that?”

“I have been sent down from the heavens to help you get your life together,” Siofra said.

“But what does that mean?”

“I have outlined to some gods the issues you have presented to me, as a person, and they seemed to agree that if I was going to be your guardian angel, the only proper way moving forward was if I took a more hands on approach to them.”

“My issues?”

“Your selfishness, mostly. And your carelessness. You’re also something of a coward when it comes to facing the consequences of your actions. Not to mention you have difficulty staying faithful in relationships where your partner expects monogamy from you. There are a few others, and I can write a list for you if you would like?”

“No. I would very much not like that,” Sa-Rang said.

“Hm. Oh well.”

“Now what do you mean when you tell me that you’re going to... help me?”

“I believe I am intended to take up a mentoring position over you.”

“Mentor me?”

“Yes. To get better.”

“By who’s standard?”

“Yours,” Siofra said. “You know what’s wrong with yourself better than anyone, and deep down, you want to change into a more selfless and caring person.” She pointed to the coffee pot. “Are you going to let that get cool before you pour it?”

Sa-Rang only now just remembered the coffee pot. She quickly turned and grabbed two mugs from the cupboard and laid them on the table, then poured the coffee into them.

“Do you take anything in your coffee?” Sa-Rang asked, a question she certainly never expected to ask to an angel ever in this lifetime or the next.

“Just black, please. I would like to try it unadorned before I try it with anything else in it.”

“You’ve never had coffee before?”

“There is no coffee in the heavens,” Siofra said.

“Really? Then what’s the point of ever getting there?”

“None, for you. When you die, you hopefully go to a paradise, which is catered to you, and neighbored by other similar paradises.”

“Sounds nice... how do you get there?”

”If I told you,” Siofra said, “that would make it harder for you to find your paradise.”

”Figures,” Sa-Rang said, “nothing can be easy, can it?”

”If it was easy, then why would we reward you for it?”

”To be nice?” Sa-Rang said, sliding Siofra’s mug over to her and spooning some sugar into her own.

”Niceness is nice, but it is not a virtue, Yeon Sa-Rang.” Siofra said, and she took the mug carefully from the side and quickly set it down, coffee stirring and spilling out the side. She breathed in sharply through her nose as she hovered her hands over the mug as she tried futilely to think of how to approach the spill. It was the least graceful that Sa-Rang had seen the angel, so far, and she’d be lying if she said that it wasn’t terribly endearing. Siofra looked up from the mug as the coffee inside settled still, and she said, “The coffee is hot.”

In spite of herself, Sa-Rang smiled. “Coffee usually is... What does helping or mentoring me entail?”

”I stay with you, and I help you. I will develop a method as we get to know each other.”

”You really came in here with no plan then, huh?” Sa-Rang said. “You’re staying here?”

Siofra nodded. “I need a place to stay on earth while I am unable to ascend back into heaven. I would be very grateful if you would lend me your couch for the time being.”

”Do I have a choice in the matter?” Sa-Rang asked. “I mean... to be mentored by you and... get better?”

”You have a choice. Of course you have a choice. It would not be right —it would not be _human—_ if you were not given a choice. However, I have been given some incentive to make sure that I would want you to cooperate with me.”

”What do you mean?”

”I mean,” Siofra said, “that I will not regain my angelic powers, and I cannot ascend back to my home in the heavens unless you become the good person that you and I both want you to become.”

”You mean...”

”I mean I am forced to put my fate and my future in your hands. If you do not cooperate with me, then I can not return to the way that I was. To my true self.”

Sa-Rang squinted her eyes at Siofra. “That was a part of the plan, huh? To guilt me into cooperating with you?”

Siofra smiled again. “It might have been a factor. Is it going to work on you, Yeon Sa-Rang?”

Sa-Rang rubbed her temples and let out a groan. She sipped her coffee and then started tapping her fingernails nervously on the tabletop. “How long will this take?”

”However long you take is entirely dependent on you. We both want this to proceed quickly, of course.”

”Of course...” Sa-Rang said.

”Do we have an agreement?” Siofra said. “Will you cooperate with my efforts?”

Sa-Rang took another sip of her coffee. “Fffuck...” she said. “This is... this is too much.”

”Too much,” Siofra said. “But deep down, you’re very curious about how this is going to proceed. Am I right?”

Sa-Rang didn’t answer.

”Well? Will we do this?” Siofra asked.

”I don’t think I can’t...”

Siofra’s smile grew wider. “You can always turn away, Yeon Sa-Rang. It means something that you don’t.”

”Is it progress already?”

”It’s the start of progress,” Siofra said. “But that’s a very good sign.” She tested the surface of of the mug with her palms. Satisfied that she might be able to pick the mug up and enjoy the coffee, she raised it in one hand. “Cheers?” She asked.

Sa-Rang looked at her. The easy smile on Siofra’s face, the way her breast were presented without so much as a milligram of shame, the fact that she was just as naked under the table... that she actively resisted the idea of wearing clothes... it was so much to take in, but... part of her was glad there was a real reason why she would want to go along with this...

She wanted to see how this would end up. She wanted to know more about this angel...

She had questions. Lots of questions about her childhood and her blessings.

Finally, and this was a long shot, but she wanted any chance for her to repair her relationship with her sister, and she was willing to grasp at any straw in order to make that happen.

Sa-Rang raised her mug. “Cheers.”

“Cheers.”

Their mugs clinked together, and they both took a hearty sip.

” _Pfah_!” Siofra sputtered after she swallowed, wincing and shaking her head. “You drink _this_ every day?”

Sa-Rang smiled and nodded. “Yeah,” she said.

If anything, at least this was going to be very interesting.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn’t intend on posting chapter 2 so soon after chapter 1, but I really wanted to have more than 1 chapter and also a chapter that featured Siofra more prominently. Oh well :p hope you enjoy it!


	3. Girls that like Girls

Yeon Sa-Rang’s first girl-crush was Rory Gilmore, the character from the Gilmore Girls. She would watch the reruns as a teenager, starting when she was around thirteen, with frequent rewatches continuing on to this day, like tradition. It was almost religious how she returned to this one sappy show, but a piece of her soul was in these episodes.

Before this, there were other girls at school or in the neighborhood that she thought were very pretty, but none of them really made her throat catch the same way that Rory Gilmore did. Her parents, being the devout Christians that they were, didn’t so much as hint at the existence of lesbians, but when Yeon Sa-Rang saw Alexis Bledel don a plaid skirt and play Rory Gilmore, it felt completely natural for her to feel attracted to girls. Watching the show, alongside her sister and her mother, she quietly wanted a girlfriend more than she wanted a boyfriend. She hadn’t said this to anyone, but it was certainly part of her motivation to stay on the couch with them and pay very close attention.

She wanted a girlfriend. She wanted a girlfriend with long, straight brown hair and absurdly blue eyes that seemed to stare on for forever. She wanted someone who gave her butterflies the same way that she got when she was watching *her* and she was fairly certain at this point in her life that it could only be a her that could replicate those feelings in the exact same way she was experiencing them, back then.

It was her little secret to herself that she liked girls. Nobody else knew anything about it. Not any of her her friends, and certainly not her family. She liked it that way, at least at first. It was something special about herself that only she knew about, that as far as she knew, she was unique in possessing among her friend groups. This particular feeling didn’t last as long as she thought that it would. The longer that she had to hide what was becoming an extremely important part of herself from her parents, because she knew that they wouldn’t approve, the more it hurt. It felt like breathing in poison and holding it inside. She just wanted to breathe it out and live the clean life of an out bisexual. She knew it had to feel better than the closeted life.

Still, Sa-Rang never really felt ashamed of herself, and after she found the right words and language to describe what she was, she was never confused, either. She knew that she liked boys and girls, and that she might have preferred girls over boys in most instances, and she knew that life would just drift by more smoothly if she kept this to herself until she was out on her own. That was the dream. She held onto this idea for years and it was something she fantasized about when she was in her bed, staring up at the ceiling and trying to put herself to sleep.

All of this trouble, all because of fucking Rory Gilmore on the fucking Gilmore Girls.

She still loved her for it, later seasons and the character-butchering Netflix specials notwithstanding. There was still a special place in her heart as well as the occasional recurring dream for her.

By age fifteen, Sa-Rang had grown to include a series of other girls on her long list of crushes beyond just the one frustrating tv character. Her best friend at the time, Melanie Watts, wasn’t exactly on the top of her list, but she was the first girl that she kissed.

Not to get her wrong, she was a very pretty girl —with cocoa-brown skin and magnificent curly brown hair with twisting blonde highlights— but Sa-Rang thought that she knew better than to kiss friends and make things awkward.

Of course she didn’t know better. She didn’t know any better when she was young and she’s barely made any progress since then. Good sense didn’t come naturally to her, but other things did.

She was, for instance, very good at convincing people to do things.

Like when they were studying in Melanie’s room, and she had convinced her to close the door.

It was off of an impulse that Sa-Rang had decided what she was going to to next. Melanie’s lipgloss let Sa-Rang see her own reflection on her mouth, and she was just starting to wear eyeliner. She was hard to ignore, and Sa-Rang got it into her head that she had to kill Melanie, and she had to kiss her today.

Her heart was racing. She knew she was making a mistake, or at the very least, that she was taking a massive risk, but she sat close to Melanie on her bed. Their legs were touching. This didn’t appear to seem out of the ordinary from Melanie’s perspective, but to Sa-Rang, this was intimacy, even if she was the only one perceiving it that way.

Subtlety probably wasn’t going to work in her favor. She was going to have to approach this more upfront.

She asked, “Have you ever kissed anyone, Melanie?”

And Melanie answered: “Nope. Why?”

It didn’t surprise Sa-Rang. Melanie was a shy girl. She had a nice personality when she was around her friends, but in groups, she often seemed closed off and guarded.

“Just wondering,” Sa-Rang said. “Have you ever... practiced?” She said the word like she couldn’t wait to get it out of her lips and far from her mind. She wanted to cringe, but she knew that it would chip away at what she was trying.

“Practice? How? With what?”

“You know... like kissing things. Pillows, you hand... friends, maybe?”

“Friends?”

“Yeah. You know. People you trust, right?” Sa-Rang said. _People like me?_ Her face was getting hot. She was pushing this too hard and too fast. She needed to backpedal it somehow. She needed to see how she reacted to this, and she needed to change speeds based on that.

“You, um... you ever do that?” Melanie asked.

“Yes,” Sa-Rang lied.

“Really? With who?”

“I wouldn’t tell,” Sa-Rang said, and she was very proud of this. This was, as she remembered it, what had gotten her onto the proper path towards what she wanted, finally.

“Pfft! Are you out there being gay with our friends, Sa-Rang?”

Sa-Rang blushed. “It’s not gay, it’s practice,” she insisted. “And it helped, you know. I know all the boys I kissed really liked it. It made me a good kisser.”

“Oh. So um... why are you telling me this?” Melanie asked.

“I don’t know... I was just thinking that maybe you wanted to try it out?”

“What?! You mean k—kiss you?” Melanie spat out, and Sa-Rang tried her best not to be hurt by the force or the tone of her exclamation. She tried to keep moving forward. “You want to kiss me?”

Sa-Rang was going to blush, and it was going to be obvious, and it was going to ruin everything. She was doing everything wrong and she hated herself over it.

She couldn’t stop herself from blushing, and she couldn’t stop herself from stuttering. “I—I’m just offering. You know. For practice. It might be good for you.”

She felt so trashy and pathetic saying that, trying to sell her own fantasy as something that Melanie needed more than Sa-Rang wanted. Still... she wanted it so, so much. Her lips looked softer and softer the longer that she looked at them. Her own lips felt dry for the wanting.

“I... I don’t know... maybe?”

Sa-Rang perked up a bit but tried to play this as coolly as possible. “I wouldn’t mind doing it for you if you wanted it,” She said. “I’m really cool with it, I wouldn’t think it was weird if you wanted to try it or anything.”

“Well... one kiss, okay?” Melanie said. “I just always wondered what it felt like... that’s all.”

Sa-Rang’s heart was beating even faster. She was afraid that Melanie might hear it drumming against the insides of her rib cage.

“Okay. Cool. I can do that. Yeah...” she was nodding nervously and her voice was shaking.

“Okay... how?” Melanie asked.

“I think we put our lips together,” Sa-Rang teased.

“Don’t be stupid Sa-Rang,” Melanie said. “I know that, I just, you know... I’ve never done this before... didn’t think that it would be with a girl my first time. Definitely didn’t think that I’d kiss you before anyone else.” She laughed that last comment off. Sa-Rang tried to laugh along that same tone.

She wanted tell her that it wouldn’t count, because they were girls, and they were friends, but she didn’t want the experience cheapened any more than Sa-Rang probably already cheapened it by jumping through hoops around her friend to get to this point.

Instead, she said, “It will be easy. I promise.” She turned to face her and leaned close. Melanie almost reeled back, but she was also smiling, like she was having trouble trying not to laugh.

“Okay,” she said, wide smile, glossy lips. “Okay, let’s do this. Do I close my eyes?”

“If you want to,” Sa-Rang said, quietly.

“Okay.” She closed her eyes.

Sa-Rang did not.

She watched Melanie, her best friend, bring her face in close, a slow approach where she couldn’t stop smiling dumbly at the sheer absurdity she must have thought this was. She was watching, but she was still surprised once their lips had finally touched.

It was soft, and Sa-Rang couldn’t describe it as passionate beyond the efforts of only one participant.

Still... Sa-Rang loved it. Melanie’s lips were so soft, so smooth. The softest and smoothest that Sa-Rang had ever kissed. She kissed boys who were marginally better kissers —probably because they were putting effort to kiss for the sake of kissing and not for the ‘practice’ or whatever— but there was something about this that was beyond comparison to all of those kisses. Maybe it was just the nerves that were hopping up inside of her, the butterflies inside her belly making her sick, but this felt so much more than that.

When their lips separated and they backed away from each other, Sa-Rang was stunned into silence, blinking away the dots in her gaze.

Melanie snorted. “Wow,” she said, and that was exactly what Sa-Rang was feeling, except in a very different tone.

“Did you—” _like it?_ she was about to ask, but stopped herself, correcting the words in her head until she came out with, “What did you think.”

“That was weird,” Melanie said. “Wasn’t it weird?”

“Heh. Yeah, I guess. Very weird...” Sa-Rang said, sliding slightly further from Melanie on the bed.

“And... did I do well?” Melanie asked.

Sa-Rang put on a smile. “You were pretty good. For a beginner, I mean.”

“Thanks. I think,” Melanie said. “You seemed to know what you were doing.”

Sa-Rang liked hearing that. She took it to mean that Melanie liked it, but there was no way that she was ever going to ask it in those words.

Sa-Rang liked being Melanie’s first kiss. She still thought about that fact, even after they had drifted apart over the years. They didn’t hang out much after they had left for two different colleges, and when they did meet, there was almost nothing to talk about. Melanie eventually got married —to a man— and Sa-Rang was invited to the wedding. Some time ago, she had been promised to be the maid of honor or the bridesmaid, but she totally understood when she wasn’t offered either position.

She had went. Alone. She was single at the time, fresh off of being caught cheating on her girlfriend of three months. She liked it. She liked looking at Melanie and knowing that she had found someone nice. She liked looking at her husband and thinking that she was partially responsible for how good a kisser his new wife was.

They haven’t exchanged more than a dozen texts between each other since then in all that time, years ago.

Still... Sa-Rang was Melanie Watts’s first kiss, and that was still a nice thing to hold on to, even now.

Her parents had passed on before Yeon Sa-Rang could come out to them. Sometimes she saw this as a cruel blessing; their last memories of each other weren’t plagued with whatever inevitable and ugly arguments and fights that would have happened if she had the courage to tell them that she was bi. There would have been screaming and tears and slammed doors and silent treatments. Sa-Rang didn’t want any of that, and a part of her was relieve that she didn’t have to go through it.

Then, there were times where she thought about it and she fixated on the fact that they never truly knew who she was in life. That hurt, and she wondered if the hurt was anything comparable to what the hurt would have been for them to know and shun her for it. She’d never know, and that haunted her on some nights.

Since she left for college, she had had girlfriends and boyfriends and, as was her unfortunate habit, both at the same time with neither party the wiser to what was happening, and since her parents’ passing, she put absolutely no hesitation behind coming out as bisexual to anyone. The only two people she was afraid of ever finding out here dead. They were the last people in the world that Sa-Rang could ever make a big deal about coming out to, and they were the only people left that Sa-Rang wanted to know.

And that was never going to happen.

Her sister knew. She knew since Sa-Rang cornered her during one of Go-Eun’s visits from college and went at length about how hard it’s been to keep this secret from her whole family, and how she needed at least one member to know, and that she was trusting her to be that only one. Go-Eun accepted her, no questions asked, and was really good at keeping her secret from her parents before the accident that took their lives.

None of that mattered, anymore. The sisters probably weren’t on speaking terms anymore, and probably weren’t going to be on speaking terms in a long, long time. Not without some sort of divine intervention, but fortunately, Sa-Rang was counting on that.

She hoped that that would be enough.

Siofra was on the couch now. Her soft, cushiony cheeks were pressed into the cloth without anything separating skin from where Yeon Sa-Rang lounged every morning. The angel’s knees —while not totally spread— were separated just enough to draw attention to where Sa-Rang’s eyes already naturally wanted to fixate on. Sa-Rang looked down on the angel from behind, and she was able to see everything that there was to see.

When Siofra turned, Sa-Rang quickly averted her gaze and stared ahead, she didn’t know towards what, but she did know that she probably wasn’t being extremely discreet in her admiration of her voluptuous figure.

“Are you going to join me?”

“J—join you?”

“On the couch? We have a lot of time in the future for my mentorship of you, I believe we should perhaps relax today and catch our bearings. Maybe while we talk and watch a program on the television set?”

“On the... on the TV.”

“I said that,” Siofra said.

“No, you— never mind...” Sa-Rang said, moving slowly, hesitantly. She lowered herself onto the couch. There was a good distance between their hips, but... it still felt so close. Tantalizingly close.

Sa-Rang didn’t know why she was so flummoxed by this. She had been around naked women, before. Naked angels, never, but in a purely aesthetic standpoint, this was nothing different. It felt like a whole other world beyond what she was used to, but she didn’t know how so.

“What um... what do you want to watch?” Sa-Rang asked.

“I do not know. I have never really watched a television program on a television set before. I have only watched you watch programs, before. I was always curious about what these programs were about. I’ve heard that they are similar but different from plays, which are easier for angels to watch.”

“Interesting. Um... we could check Netflix, I guess,” Sa-Rang said, reaching for the remote on the coffee table and switching over to the app. “Anything you, um... want to watch?” She asked. It was ridiculous, she thought. What would an angel even want to watch?

“I am not sure,” Siofra said, just as Sa-Rang had expected her to answer. “What would you normally watch?”

“I’m... not sure. I’m kind of between binges, right now.”

“Binges? I remember you telling yourself that you weren’t going to do that since the last time someone had to pull your hair up while you vomited into a toilet in a club.”

Sa-Rang remembered saying that. It was only two months ago. She remembered the hangover more than she remembered the actual binge, or even the part where she was puking. She ruined her favorite little green dress that day.

“Not that kind of binging,” Sa-Rang said, swallowing the minor humiliation of someone other than a few of her closest friends seeing her absolutely fall apart in a club bathroom. “Binging on Netflix is like starting a show and watching hours and hours of it at one time until your finished.”

“Ah. I have seen you do that. Multiple times,” Siofra said.

“Great,” Sa-Rang said.

“Albeit, I use those instances to take breaks and attend to other matters.”

“What kind of ‘other matters’ does a guardian angel have up there in heaven?”

“‘The heavens,’” Siofra corrected. “Just personal things. I do have a life outside of you, as demanding of a job as you have proven to be.”

Sa-Rang couldn’t begin to imagine what ‘personal things’ would even mean to a guardian angel. Siofra didn’t seem to want to go into too much detail on that subject, so Sa-Rang focused on thinking up of something she could play that would make a good first episode of anything on TV that an angel has ever watched.

It was a tough thing to consider. She went through a lot of the ‘classics,’ like The Office or Friends, now that she was given the freedom to recommend those kind of shows to somebody without the danger of the person calling her a basic bitch because of it. She considered putting on her all time favorite show, Gilmore Girls, too, but told herself that that was something Siofra was going to need more context for, because if her angel wound up being someone who didn’t like Gilmore Girls, this was going to be a very long and rough mentorship.

Just as well, she felt compelled to both offer up one of her favorite Kdramas, such as Goblin or Strong Woman Do Bong Soon. There was a sentimentality to them that Sa-Rang held that made them hard for her to recommend until when Siofra was ‘ready,’ whenever that was and whatever that meant. There was also the fact that Siofra appeared to be very Caucasian, and Sa-Rang didn’t yet feel like making the discovery that this white nudist angel somehow spoke and understood Korean better than she did.

There was also the temptation of trying to impress Siofra with something that had a bit more substance to it. Something very impressive that would give Siofra a good first impression of what humanity could do with the medium of film. Something dense and meaningful. The kind of movie that Sa-Rang pretended to like when she was talking to her friends who pretended to care or know about what happened on the Oscars.

The idea that she could possibly impress the naked angel was quickly ruined by what Siofra said next.

“I am actually pretty curious about who Troy and Gabriella are, and why you’ve been talking about them ever since you were a child.”

Sa-Rang bit her lip and nodded a few times. “I... guess I can put on... High School Musical...” she said. “If, um... if that’s something that you want to watch?”

Siofra nodded, gorgeous crimson hair flowing. “It would help to explain a lot of your interactions with your friends both from in the past and in the present.”

Sa-Rang pursed her lips. She was going to have a lot of explaining to do. “Okay...”

She switched over from Netflix to Disney+, then, presenting her with what she was beginning to realize was a truth about herself, there was the first High School Musical, right there on her ‘recently watched’ list.

So much for deep cinema.

“Alright, I’ll put this on, but I’ll tell you right away, the second one is better.”

“They made the same movie twice?” Siofra asked.

“No, I mean there’s a sequel. And a second sequel... a third movie. I mean—”

“I understand,” Siofra said, raising her hand. Smiling. She was smiling, and it was gorgeous. That smile was probably capable of making Sa-Rang blush harder than the angel’s naked body, still on display. “Let’s watch it?”

Sa-Rang nodded. “Let’s,” she said. She pushed play, then got up and turned off the light, sitting back again next to Siofra. This time maybe a bit closer than she had been, before.

They didn’t speak much. Siofra was, at first, very still. Her first words were during the karaoke scene. “They are Troy and Gabriella, yes?”

“Yes,” Sa-Rang said. “They are.”

“Ah. They have very nice voices.”

Sa-Rang smiled.

The further that they got into the movie, the more questions Siofra asked, and observations she made. Some of the highlights included:

“Is that blonde the villain?”

“The blonde villain and her boyfriend are siblings?”

“Oh, so this is like Romeo and Juliet?”

“Wait, never mind. This isn’t like Romeo and Juliet at all.”

“Why is that sports team dancing? I thought they did not like that.”

And finally, “Wait, you mean to say that it just ends there? After the audition? Just an audition?”

“Well, they did the important stuff by the end, you know,” Sa-Rang said.

“Such as?”

“Well, Troy and Gabriella both learned to embrace their love of the theater and singing and dancing, you know. And they got together at the end.”

“Ah... I see. So it was an inner victory.”

“Something like that,” Sa-Rang said.

“Well... I liked it. It was very interesting. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Sa-Rang wasn’t sure if that was a genuine compliment, but what Siofra said next suggested that it actually was.

“May we watch the second one, now?”

Sa-Rang looked at the clock. It was almost 10:30. She didn’t work tomorrow, and as exhausted as she was... it was extremely tempting to just keep watching.

“Alright,” Sa-Rang said, playing the next one. “This one’s the best one, I promise.”

Siofra’s interest in this one was more immediate. She leaned forward —her breasts swinging under her— with her hands on her naked thighs as she nodded along to the musical numbers, even mouthing the words as she learned the lyrics.

“Why does Troy’s voice sound so different compared to in the first High School Musical?” Siofra asked.

Sa-Rang just smiled.

They had started the third one immediately after. Ten minutes into this one —admittedly Sa-Rang’s least favorite— her eyes were getting heavy. She was paying less and less attention, and she caught herself yawning and nodding off a few times.

Things started to get blurry. It was getting harder and harder to pay attention...

She was losing the fight to both her exhaustion and to gravity. She started leaning towards her side. Eyes closed. Head on something... soft. Cushiony. Very comfortable. Very nice.

She yawned one last time, then drifted off to sleep. So, so peacefully...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kind of related to this chapter but i signed up for AO3 with the intention of writing a canon compliant Gilmore Girls fic but i was at such a total loss for where to even begin with it so i just decided to throw out my gay naked angel fantasies and think about some other fics in the meantime lol
> 
> Next chapter is either going to be very long, or split into two smaller chapters i think. Might take a bit, but i’m open to feedback in the meantime??


	4. Still Real in the Morning

Sa-Rang was dreaming. Peacefully.

She was in along the side of a beautiful sparkling spring, atop an ornate chair, surrounded by naked servant girls who were all very conspicuously red headed, freckled, and busty in the extreme. They were feeding her grapes and fanning her with one of those fans that required the use of both hands to use.

This was the life, and she was absolutely convinced that this was exactly where she was supposed to be. This was what she deserved.

One of the servant girls, identical to the others but still somehow the most beautiful of them, sashayed over to her, smile on her face and not a single stitch of clothing on.

”My lady,” she said in a sultry voice. “It is time for your scheduled afternoon of lovemaking.”

Sa-Rang smiled. “Good. I was getting worried that you might have forgotten.”

she stood up and dropped the golden toga she had been wearing, now naked herself. “You may all take me.”

The servant girls —there must have been six of them, but Sa-Rang hadn’t paid enough attention to count— surrounded her and laid their hands upon her, with the leader taking Sa-Rang in with a deep kiss.

If there was a paradise waiting for her, she hoped it looked like this...

  
  


Sa-Rang woke up in her bed, under the covers, and in the same sweats and sweater she was wearing all of yesterday after she got home from work, right down to the socks, and she hated sleeping in socks. She reached for her phone by the bedside, only to discover that it wasn’t there.

She got out of bed. The door was open. She always closed the bedroom door when she went to sleep.

She moved her hair out of her face. She picked a hair tie up from on top of the drawer and fixed up a ponytail.

One of two things were out that open door. The first of those potential things was nothing. The second of them was a naked angel and newly minted High School Musical fan. She was getting tired of trying to convince herself that Siofra wasn’t real, so she determined that if she _was_ in her living room, that would determine once and for all that this was a real thing that was actually happening to her.

She took in a deep breath and worked up the courage to walk out of her bedroom door.

She took the steps, slowly, into the hall, where the first thing she saw was her phone on the coffee table, and the second thing was Siofra’s naked body, prone on the couch.

The angel was sleeping.

The angel was _snoring_.

Siofra was on her back, head rested on a throw pillow, right arm over her belly, right leg slightly bent as it pushed against the arm rest, left arm with its hand set against the top of the coffee table, left leg hanging off the side. There was a very... *noticeable* spread in her legs. One that Sa-Rang was taking this opportunity, now that the angel was asleep and that she couldn’t judge her for staring. Her clit really was the perfect shade of pink... and her *tiddies.* She was lying in such a way that they depressed lopsidedly into her chest, and falling just so slightly to her sides.

Sa-Rang inhaled and thought to herself, _Holy fuck_.

She kept looking as she thought about what she was going to do next. She didn’t know to wake her or to let her sleep.

Sa-Rang eventually decided that she was going to go on ahead with her morning routine, and if that would wake up Siofra, then so it wakes the angel.

She prepped up some coffee and started brewing it so that it would be waiting for her once she was out of the bathroom.

Teeth brushed, she undressed and stepped into the shower. The hot water pelted her back and helped ease what felt like a month’s worth of stresses that she had gotten all of in just about half of a week.

When she closed her eyes, she saw Siofra. All of Siofra. The image of her body had been permanently burned into her mind.

Her hand hovered over her hairy crotch. She barely hesitated when she slipped two fingers into her pussy and started playing with herself. She had to, eventually, or she was simply going to implode having to stare at Siofra all this time and pretend that everything was normal about it. About her being an angel and about her being buck-ass nude. This was for stress relief, of course.

So, so stressful...

And this was so, so relieving.

The door opened.

Sa-Rang let out a high-pitched yelp, extracted her fingers from between her legs, and immediately backed herself into the corner of the shower as she used her arms to try and cover up all of the vulnerable bits.

“Yeon Sa-Rang. You are here,” Siofra said, looking at Sa-Rang dead in the eyes through the clear glass shower case.

“S—Siofra! What are you doing? I’m showering! I’m naked!”

“I’m naked, too,” Siofra pointed out.

“Well I know that!”

“And I’ve also seen you naked countless times. Sometimes with other people, doing other things.”

Sa-Rang blushed even harder. “W—what do you want?!” She asked.

Siofra turned her head out the door. “Your coffee maker beeped. It woke me up. Your coffee is ready.”

Sa-Rang blinked, flabbergasted. “Is that all??”

“I was wondering if you would be able to prepare me a coffee with cream and sugar this time, seeing as my first coffee tasted so terrible without it.”

“I— I’ll get to it _after_ my shower. Now go, I’m busy.”

“Were you masturbating?”

_“Go!!!”_

Siofra’s eyes widened and she nodded, turning away and leaving the room, but also leaving the door wide open.

Sa-Rang uncovered herself. “Fuckkkkk,” she said. So much for relieving stress...

Heart was still racing... door was still open. She couldn’t do anything, even if she wanted to, and god did she want to. It took everything in her power to stop her from finishing the job.

The rest of the shower went by incredibly quickly. She was in a rush, and there was no longer any incentive to stay any longer than she absolutely needed to, in spite of what her body was yelling at her was a need.

She dried off, got dressed, and walked out into the living room with a towel wrapped around her wet hair.

Siofra was sitting patiently at the table.

Sa-Rang looked at her and did not say anything.

“Are you upset?” The angel asked.

Sa-Rang thinned her lips and tried to decide if she was upset. “No,” she said, since she was leaning more in that direction, though she could still easily swing the other way if given enough time to think about it. She brought out two mugs and poured for them both. Then the half and half, and then the sugar. She stirred their coffees and she pushed Siofra’s over to her. Sa-Rang went heavy with the half and half for the angel, considering her first experience with black coffee had her wincing throughout the entire mug as she insisted she would finish it.

“That’s still going to be hot,” Sa-Rang warned.

“Thank you for the warning, Yeon Sa-Rang,” Siofra said, nodding her head.

“I told you,” Sa-Rang said, “you can just call me Sa-Rang.”

“I have heard you that first time.” Siofra blew on the steaming coffee.

Sa-Rang rolled her eyes and started to drink her own coffee. She was used to the heat by now, unlike the angel. Sa-Rang couldn’t imagine that Siofra’s skin was too used to sensation...

... untouched angel skin...

... If only she had more time alone in the shower... Sa-Rang’s own body was far from untouched, and as of late, most of the fingerprints belonged to her own damn self.

“You fell asleep last night, not even halfway into the third High School Musical,” Siofra said, cutting into Sa-Rang’s more lustful thoughts.

“Oh yeah... I guess I did. I had a rough few days, but you probably already knew that.”

“I did. It’s been quite a spiral,” Siofra said.

“Mm. One way to put it...” Sa-Rang said.

“Been going on a long time. It was difficult for me to not attempt an intervention earlier than I had.”

Another sip. She was probably going to have to brew up a second pot of coffee, very soon.

“You fell asleep on top of me,” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang snorted, coffee splashed from the force of air rushing from her nose. “I what?”

“When you fell asleep, you rested yourself on top of me. Specifically on top of my breasts. You used them like they were pillows.”

Sa-Rang’s face turned bright red. “I—I—I—I—”

“It is not an issue. In earnest. You were tired. You needed to rest.”

“Oh, um... oh...kay...” Sa-Rang wanted to pull the towel from her head and bury her face into it just so that she didn’t have to be seen right now. “That must have been when you took me to my bed then?”

“No.”

“What do you mean...?”

“I did not know how to use the remote controller device so that I could freeze the film, and after the first and second films, I did not want to risk missing anything important in the plot —things were getting very tense towards the end— so I simply repositioned your head onto my lap and watched the rest of the film like that. When it was finished, I carried you to your bed.”

“You put my head... on your lap?” Sa-Rang asked.

Siofra nodded. “Yes.”

“Your lap?”

“... yes...”

“Your lap... where your, um... where your pussy is?” Sa-Rang said, the p-word croaked out weekly as she realized it wasn’t something she really wanted to say to an angel.

“My... pussy?” Siofra asked, then thought for a bit before nodding and said, “Oh, yes. Not the cat. Human slang term for the vagina. Yes, your head was where that was.”

Sa-Rang swallowed, then started to drink her coffee faster. The fact that she was mortally embarrassed was only slightly remedied by the fact that Siofra didn’t seem to possess a singular fucking clue as to why Sa-Rang even would be embarrassed by this. Then there was also the part of her that wished she could have been in any way conscious during that moment in time, just to know what it felt like.

She did sleep like a baby, at least, so on some level she must have known that she was resting her head on a heavenly body.

“Do you think that my coffee is appropriately cool, now?” Siofra asked.

“Yeah. It should be,” Sa-Rang said.

Siofra, more hesitantly than the last time, raised her mug for a sip. She closed her eyes and she nodded. “Ah, yes. This is indeed much better than it was without the cream and sugar. I still do not think that I fully understand the singleminded fixation that you have on this beverage, but this is a league more pleasant than the cup last night.”

“Good,” Sa-Rang said.

“Now,” Siofra said, “I do think that we might have a lot to discuss in moving forward.”

“Yeah. I guess we do. Where do we start?”

“With your problems?”

“Haven’t you done a good enough job at listing them to me last night?”

“Hmm... correct, I suppose. I did have some time to consider how I might help you fix them while you were drooling onto my lap.”

Another hard swallow. “What did you think of?” She asked, deciding not to pay that last part any mind.

“I think the best way for you to get better at handling situations that you have difficulty in —such as monogamy and honesty— would be to put you into situations where you might need to confront those weaknesses.

Sa-Rang tilted her head. “Situations such as?”

“Dating, perhaps? And dating a singular person, and nobody else beyond that save for the situational availability of an agreed-upon consensual sex act featuring multiple partners.”

“Oh god...” Sa-Rang muttered.

“Do you have issues with this?”

“Well... a little, yeah. For one, I don’t think that I know I’m ready to get myself into any kind of relationship right now. I don’t have that kind of emotional fortitude anymore. Still kind of reeling from...”

“From when you started sleeping with your sister’s husband behind her back and ultimately fractured their family for your own short-term pleasure?”

Sa-Rang made a face. “Yeah. Since that...” she hated that she couldn’t even try and deny that that was exactly what had happened. Siofra must have seen a lot. She must have seen more than what Sa-Rang was comfortable imagining.

“Well... I can understand if you are not ready for a relationship after the sheer amount of needless emotional distress you put upon yourself and the people around you that you claim to care about.”

Sa-Rang was beginning to realize that she much preferred Siofra when she wasn’t talking business.

“But still...” Siofra said, then took another reluctant sip of her coffee. “Maybe if I were to put you in a mock relationship?”

“A... mock relationship?”

“Yes. With me.”

A trio of blinked. “With you??”

“Yes,” Siofra nodded. “Not a real one, mind you. Under no circumstances would we ever need to engage in sexual intercourse, or even lie in the same bed or kiss.”

That took a bit of the fun out of it for Sa-Rang.

”Then what—”

”We will, for all intents and purposes save for the intimate details, be girlfriends with each other. You will not cheat on me, and when I need you to be available, I would like you to do your best to be available with me. We will also talk in-depth about your days and whatever struggles you might have had, and where you feel like you could have done better, or where you might have needed help.”

”... okay. Works for me, I guess...”

”And Yeon Sa-Rang,” Siofra said. “I know you. I know you better than anyone. I know that you’re already telling yourself that you will be able to lie to me if things get too rough.”

Damn it, she was right...

”And you might be able to,” Siofra said. “I don’t have all of my angelic abilities at my disposal so I am particularly vulnerable, even to you. But I need you to understand how crucial it is that you cooperate. For the both of us. I like being an angel after all, and I would very much like to get back to that, just as I’m sure you want your apartment back to yourself. Now, will please agree to be as helpful to me and more importantly, to yourself, so that this may be done smoothly?”

Sa-Rang hated that she had to think this over. “Okay. Deal. I’ll do my best.”

Siofra smiled. It was lovely to behold. “Good. Then it is agreed upon. Cheers to it?” She asked, raising her mug.

The corner of Sa-Rang’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Yeah. Cheers.”

They clinked their mugs together and then drank their coffee.

”We are now girlfriends,” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang felt her smile grow odd. _Girlfriends_... she thought.

This was going to be a long, strange mentorship...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to divide the 1 long chapter into 2 chapters because I think it works better that way. I also kinda rly like lotsa shorter chptrs. Hope you like them too!


	5. You Have to Dig it Up Eventually

It was never that Sa-Rant wanted to cheat.

No, she always had a reason. She had a list of them, prepared for the inevitability that she was caught.

She was always, always caught, and that never seemed to stop her from doing it again the next time. She knew she was being stupid, and cruel, but that rarely did anything to stop her. Whenever she was doing something that she knew was wrong, it was like there was something in the back of her head that switched off her common sense,

Besides, she had her reasons. Reasons like “I was getting claustrophobic,” or “I wasn’t growing in this relationship”’ or “I needed to step out for a bit to see who I am outside of this whole thing.”

For some reason, her ex partners never really took too kindly to anything that she said to try and justify any sort of dalliance on her part.

Yeah, she knew why. She knew she was usually in the wrong. Okay, that she was almost always in the wrong. Universally in the wrong, so far, but eventually she was going to be in the right like the broken clock she was.

She was normally able to move on, though, and she felt more guilt about the fact that she moved on from her wrongdoings so quickly than she felt about the things she actually did wrong.

At least she moved on from that pretty quickly, too.

Siofra expanded on the details after they had agreed to their mock relationship. They were harsh details, bringing back the old scars that Sa-Rang had left on other people, from a perspective that Sa-Rang hadn’t immediately considered. That being, any perspective other than her own.

While Siofra mostly focused down on Sa-Rang when she was watching from the heavens, occasionally she looked over to the lives of the people that Sa-Rang had touched, usually for the worse, apparently. Sa-Rang would have probably assumed as much, but it kind of hurt to hear it as a fact instead of just a hunch.

She had tried her best to not think of some of these names again since she parted with them. It didn’t feel right to think that they were doing anything outside of the point where Sa-Rang was involved with them. She said as much.

“See,” Siofra began, “I think that might be one of the problems.”

Well, when she said it out loud like that, yeah, it came off a bit wrong.

“You are really adept at taking things that you’ve done wrong to others, putting those things into a box, and putting that box into a different room than you,” she explained, making the hand gestures for putting something into a box and moving it aside.

“Well,” Sa-Rang said, “that’s a completely normal thing for people to do. It helps us move on without all that baggage.”

“Without other people’s baggage, you mean?”

“Well, why *should* I carry it for them?” Sa-Rang asked.

“Because you gave it to them?”

“That’s not how baggage works.”

“The metaphor is escaping us,” Siofra said.

“I thought that was a simile,” Sa-Rang said.

“It is one of those things, and it is clear to me that we should speak in more plain terms moving on from now,” Siofra said, “lest something like this happens again.”

The blow of the fact that this all had to be simplified for her was only softened by the fact that the angel also needed it that way, and could also barely tell what the difference between a metaphor and a simile was without searching it.

But Sa-Rang had Google and the naked angel did not, so who was really winning?

“Continuing on, I have noticed that you are actively repulsed with the idea of facing your problems and owning up to them. Owning up to them or correcting them, for that matter. Also, I have noticed in my watching you that you have rarely ever, if ever, sought to make amends with the people that you’ve wronged.”

“There’s no making amends for cheating,” Sa-Rang said.

“Or apologies as far as you’re concerned.”

Sa-Rang wanted to snap at the angel, but she quickly reminded herself why she was here. She wanted to get better, —sometimes— and she had a literal angel helping her get there. she should be grateful for the chance and not get so defensive at the facts as they were laid in front of her.

She had to keep reminding herself that this angel pulled her out from the riptide. She’d be dead without her. It was weird to think of it like that.

Time to be more patient.

Still, she had an argument to make, and it made sense to her, at least. “Look, when I break up with—”

“When you ruin a relationship,” Siofra interjected.

“—when I break up with someone and it’s on bad terms—”

“Bad terms as you habitually leave things.”

“—the last person they ever want to see is going to be me. I’m doing them a favor by staying out of their lives.”

“That must make it very easy for you to simply cut them out of your sight completely and not have to think about them.” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang’s teeth ground together.

“I think I know what should be the first step on your road to redemption,” Siofra said before Sa-Rang’s emotions could bubble to the surface and come out as harsh words.

“You think so?” Sa-Rang asked, interlacing her fingers together and squeezing.

“I think you should call and offer an apology to one of your ex lovers,” Siofra said.

“Excuse me?”

“Did you not hear me the first time? I said—”

“I heard you the first time, it’s just... ridiculous. I can’t just... call someone after so long of not talking to them.”

“You mean after so long after cheating on them and then cutting off all ties with them completely and thoroughly.”

“Will you stop doing that??”

Siofra shook her head. “Part of this process will be to correct your statements when you euphemistically refer to your past in a light that more favorably reflects you,” she said. “Now should this be via phone or in person?”

“I think it should be via never,” Sa-Rang said.

“You are never going to make progress if you keep resisting attempts to right your wrongs. Also, do you think this should be with one of the people you cheated on, or cheated with? I am more leaning towards the former, but if you think the latter would be easier, I am willing to concede and allow you to make baby steps.”

“I don’t think this should happen.”

“And I think that you need to learn to face your mistakes and make amends. You can not simply walk away from every bad thing that you’ve done and pretend that it does not exist. It is the first step, actually, in becoming a better person to face up to the wrongs that you’ve done in the past and attempt to correct them.”

“Can’t I correct them in a different direction?” Sa-Rang asked, desperate to not have to do this, to do literally anything other than this.

“I think it would be counterproductive to your redemption to ignore something like this,” Siofra said. “You do want to get better, don’t you?”

Sa-Rang pursed her lips and thought for a bit. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it... I just need a bit more time to prepare myself emotionally.”

“Tomorrow, then?”

“Tomorrow?? That soon?”

“I would very much like my angelic powers and home returned to me,” Siofra said. “As soon as possible. I am a patient angel —you would have to be, assigned to you, but at the same time it would be very nice to speed along as best as we are able to.”

That’s right... Sa-Rang wasn’t just working to rehabilitate herself. An entire angel’s nature of being was relying on her getting her shit together and becoming a more functioning human being. “Okay... tomorrow... after work. I’ll think of who I’ll call and what to say at work.”

“Yes, because of the way you prefer to daydream rather than perform the actual work that you are paid to do while you’re on the clock,” Siofra said.

“Yes... because of that...” Sa-Rang said.

“Now that we have that set up, I have a something I would like to request.”

“Request?” Sa-Rang asked.

“Yes,” Siofra said. “Since coming into this mortal plane with this more human body, I have begun to accrue... scents... that I normally do not acquire in the heavens. I would very much like to shower.”

“Okay... then shower.”

“I would like you to teach me how to use the shower,” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang blinked. “You watched me my entire life and you don’t know how to use a shower?”

“Watching something is different from doing something,” Siofra said.

“I guess, but still... it’s pretty easy.”

“It might be to you, but may you still please show me?”

I put my tongue into my cheek. “Okay,” Sa-Rang said, standing up, leading her to the bathroom.

“Step into the shower,” Sa-Rang said, sliding open the shower.

She stepped into the shower.

Sa-Rand pointed to the knobs. “That one’s for hot water, that one’s for cold, and that one is to turn it on. The shower head detaches in case you need to wash your armpit.”

“Oh yes. I have seen you use it for masturbatory purposes many a time.”

“... of course you have,” Sa-Rang said. “Anything else?”

“May you turn the shower on to the desirable setting?” Siofra asked.

“I... guess. Just... pay attention all right?” Sa-Rang reached into the shower and started turning on a lot of hot with a bit of cool. “Ready?” She asked.

Siofra nodded.

“It’s going to start off a bit cold, then it’s going to get warmer. You remember what I said so that you can adjust it, right?”

“Yes. Hot, cold, and on.”

“Alright. I’m turning it on, now.” She turned the knob and immediately backed away before water could do more than pelt her arm and a bit of her hair.

“ _Eep!_ ” Siofra went, backing away from the cold blast of water, breasts bouncing as she tried to shield her body with her arms. After a few seconds she tested the shower with her feet and nodded, stepping under the downpour, her red hair glistening and flattening, drops streaking her now shining body...

Sa-Rang felt like maybe she shouldn’t be watching this, but, at the same time, she couldn’t really look away.

“Which lotion is for hair and which is for body?” Siofra asked.

“Hair, body,” Sa-Rang said, pointing to one of each. “I am not helping you apply either of those.”

“No need,” Siofra said, taking the body wash and squirting it into her hand before she immediately and without shame began lathering it all over herself.

Sa-Rang wanted to point out that a washcloth works better than her hands but she was too dumbfounded to make any words.

“I—I’m going to leave you alone,” she said, blinking away from the show. “Don’t use too much water. I’ll... see you outside, eventually.”

“See you,” Siofra said, still rubbing the body wash her glorious figure.

Sa-Rang stepped out of the bathroom and closed the door behind her. After that, she quickly ran to her room, closed the door, locked it, and removed her bottoms as she threw herself onto the bed, her hands sliding between her legs.

This time she was going to finish. She needed to, for all that she saw, and for all the stress that was going to happen tomorrow.

She bit her lip to avoid making a sound. She was working quickly, in case she couldn’t finish before Siofra got out of the shower and decided to interrupt her again.

Just a bit more, just a bit more until she was finished, and...

She let out a long gasp and slumped. That was one of the most intense orgasms she’s had in a long, long time. Just went to show how badly she really needed it.

She heard the shower stop. She was just in time. She cleaned herself up with some tissues, put her bottoms back on, and then left her room, back to the couch to pretend that that was where she had been the entire time. It was okay... she could relax a bit more, now.


	6. Where To Begin?

The rest of that day was less planning, a bit more TV, just switching through random things until they landed on the Great British Bake Off and decided to watch an episode or six. Until they were both too tired.

Sa-Rang liked seeing that even Siofra could get exhausted after enough time in front of the TV. It made her seem a bit less angelic, which was something that Sa-Rang knew she liked because the angel has been all high and mighty with her today, what with all of that bringing up her past misdeeds and making her face them.

It was nice to know that, right now, as she was, she was still _almost_ human. There was something intimidating about her otherwise.

Siofra slept on the couch again, and this time Sa-Rang was just awake enough to get into bed herself, undress and snuggle up.

She didn’t really want to sleep. Not while she knew what was coming up for her, tomorrow. Work, first of all, but after that...

Who was she even going to call? She couldn’t begin to figure out... she was scared of each of them. She didn’t want to see any of their faces, or even hear their voices.

She sighed. The number was in the wheelhouse of ten. She felt a bit of shame, the more she counted, and a bit guilty faced with the possibility that she might have been forgetting one or two of them.

It felt like she was presented with some great failure of hers. It made her heart beat uncomfortably fast. She was finding it hard to sleep. Hard to even close her eyes. She had her hand working under the cover but... that wasn’t enough. That wasn’t what was going to calm her. She tried to narrow the list down...

She didn’t want to confront one of the men. Not yet. That narrowed it pretty well, leaving five women that she had either cheated on or cheated with. She narrowed it down further, deciding that, if she was going to apologize, it would be to one of the women she had cheated _on_.

That left two. She inhaled. She looked back on her times with them.

The first was a musician, a passionate artist and an equally passionate lover. Dating her felt a bit like being in the middle of a hurricane, and when she found out that Sa-Rang had been unfaithful, that felt like being struck by lightning. She... might be a bit too intense for the baby steps that Sa-Rang was trying to make tomorrow.

That left Sa-Rang with one last woman, which was a relief in and of itself, but... then Sa-Rang remembered her time with that woman... and how nice it was. How nice _she_ was. Just how absolutely... _nice_ they were together.

When it came to ruining relationships, some of them had aftermaths that were easier to weather than others, but this one... she felt like a real villain at the end of this one. Everything was going so well and then she decided she had to go ahead and ruin it for no real reason other than the fact that she could.

It hurt her to look back on that period in any detail. It hurt because of the ending of it, how quiet it had been compared to her other breakups, but how much more deeply she had felt it. It hurt because of everything leading up to the end, because until Sa-Rang had decided to fuck everything up, it almost seemed like she could still be there right now, two years later.

Her biggest what-if. Her name was Carol Weber, and she was a baker.

Maybe she would be better now if she had just been better that one time. Maybe she would be happy and she wouldn’t need the divine intervention of a nudist angel with a fixation on binging TV in her spare time.

Maybe all those things, but the more that Sa-Rang had thought about it, the more she knew that she needed to apologize to her, first.

This didn’t make it easier to sleep. It made her anxious to call —Carol’s number was still in Sa-Rang’s contacts all this time later— and it made her nervous to hear her voice again. Things were left off on a pretty shaky foundation, and they haven’t spoken at all to each other since. To just walk into her life after all this time... just to apologize... it was unthinkable.

Maybe this was a bad idea, after all...

 _Fuck_ , thought Sa-Rang as she turned and pressed her face into the pillow, breathing it in deeply and then letting it out again.

“What am I going to do?” She said, muffled into her pillow.

Her chest burned with the kind of anxiety that was coursing through her right now. She wanted to leave her room and wake up Siofra and tell her that the plans were off, and that they needed to find something else for her to do to become the ‘better person’ that she needed to become in order for Siofra to return to being the angel that she used to be. Maybe then she would be able to sleep.

She was sorely tempted to...

She turned to her side and watched the door. Maybe she would understand...

She would understand alright. She’d understand what a self-centered coward Sa-Rang was.

Well, Sa-Rang could accept that. Siofra was here to change that. She would make her. The angel would somehow find a way to guilt her into it.

Maybe that’s what she needed. Sa-Rang had to ask herself if she would really be doing any of this if it weren’t for the sheer amount of guilt weighing down on her conscious making it tough for her to lead an unencumbered life.

Would that guilt even go away? It wasn’t like she was going to be able to make amends for what she did to Carol. That ship had sailed. What happened, happened, and Sa-Rang couldn’t think of a single thing she could do to change that. The only difference would be that she had apologized, and Sa-Rang didn’t think that that would do much of anything to ease the weight on anyone involved. It couldn’t possibly be enough to make her a measurably better person, could it?

God damn it, she wished she would have watched The Good Place past the first three episodes. Maybe then she would know better.

“This is a nightmare...” she whispered to herself. She hoped that Siofra didn’t have any super hearing or anything, because Sa-Rang just really wanted to start complaining into the air for nobody to hear but herself.

Sa-Rang barely slept. She would think that she was sleeping for a bit, but then realize that if she was really sleeping, she wouldn’t be thinking that. She wouldn’t be able to think that. Then again, sleep was slowly becoming something she forgot what it felt like, so who was to say that she wasn’t actually asleep for those bite-sized pieces of time before the hellish alarm sounded from her home.

When she sat up, she felt like she was dying. Out of habit, she walked out of the room naked, with her clothing and a towel in her arms, and only thought about her new roommate being here as she was outside.

When Siofra looked over from the couch, just as naked as ever, and said, “Good morning,” Sa-Rang had decided that right now, she didn’t really care if that nudist angel saw her while she was equally naked.

“Morning,” Sa-Rang said, reluctant to even open her mouth before she brushed her teeth. She then rushed to the bathroom and rushed out when she was done. There were lines under her eyes, and makeup could only do so much to conceal it in the time that she had left before she was late.

She started towards the door, eyes focused ahead.

“Did you put any thought on to today’s call?” Siofra said, right as Sa-Rang’s hand touched the doorknob.

Sa-Rang breathed in. “I know who I’m going to call,” she said.

“Who?” Siofra asked, and it only then occurred to Sa-Rang that Siofra would have been able to see the entire relationship disintegrate from her view in the heavens.

“Carol,” Sa-Rang said.

“Oh. That’s a good choice,” Siofra said. “I liked it when you two were together. She was a very kind woman. I hated to see you two break up.”

“I hated to break up,” Sa-Rang said quietly.

“Well... you are aware of why it happened, correct?”

Sa-Rang wanted to snap at the angel that she did know, but she refrained. This wasn’t something that she had any right getting defensive over. Not with the way that she allowed things to play out. Not with her active part in the destruction of that relationship.

“Yes. I’m aware,” Sa-Rang said tersely.

“Do you know what you are going to say to her?” Siofra asked.

“I really don’t have a clue,” Sa-Rang said.

“Well... I will be here if you need help.”

“And stay here, please,” Sa-Rang said. “I can’t have you walking around the streets naked and getting arrested while you’re here on earth.”

“That is an issue?” Siofra asked.

“Yes. A big one.”

“Curious. It did not seem to be a big issue when I came to this earth and I had to find your door.”

Sa-Rang blinked and tilted her head at the angle. “You... wait... you just... came to earth naked and had to look for my door... naked? In the city?”

Siofra nodded. “It was about an hour’s walk.”

“Oh my god,” Sa-Rang said. “Do you know how dangerous that was? You could have...” she shook her head. “Never mind. Stay here and under no circumstances leave. When I get back, we will discuss your wardrobe when it comes to leaving the apartment, okay?”

“When you get back, you will make a call, but yes, after that, you can talk to me about that silly human thing you call modesty.”

Sa-Rang opened the door. “Stay put,” she said, jabbing her finger in the angel’s direction.

“I will remain inside.”

“Good.” She left. Off to work.

“Girl, do you even know what sleep it?” Devin said after giving Sa-Rang her coffee.

“I don’t know anymore...” Sa-Rang said, not even waiting for the coffee to cool before she started drinking. It hurt to go down, and the tip and top of her tongue pulsed for minutes afterwards, but at least she was able to feel _something_.

“What’s happening, Sa-Rang?”

Sa-Rang set the mug down and stood up. “I don’t know... I’m... I don’t know.”

“It must be something,” Devin said. “Do you need to talk?”

“I have someone,” Sa-Rang said.

“So it’s something and you’re talking about it?” Devin said.

“Yeah. I’m working on something. Working on myself, I guess.” Sa-Rang shrugged.

“Okay...” Devin said, circling the desk and then looking down at her from the other side. “Just remember, as much as I know the ‘gay best friend’ thing is a tired cliche, I’m here to talk to you in any way you would need a gay best friend, for.”

“Thanks, Dev,” Sa-Rang said. “I really appreciate that.”

She looked at him, and she had to wonder how much of him being helpful was thanks to just the fact that they got along pretty well and that Sa-Rang didn’t do anything horrible to him yet, and how much of it was her apparent ‘blessing’ to be able to get along with people. It was an awful thought, and she wanted very much to just put it away.

“Dev?” She asked.

“Yes, Sa-Rang?”

“I, um... have you ever had... relationship issues?” She asked.

“Gay Black man in the club scene?” Devin asked, then shook his head. “Nope. Can’t say that I ever had any issues with relationships, ever.”

“Very funny, Dev.”

“I thought so,” Devin said. “But yes. I’ve had a lot of problems. A lot of different problems. What kind are you asking about?”

“I, um... has anyone ever cheated on you?”

“Oh... well yes. Once.”

Sa-Rang paused and thought about how she was going to approach this, next.

“If... if the man that cheated on you just suddenly called you and he... and he wanted to apologize to you... how would you take it?”

“Hm...” Devin paced a bit around the small bookshop. “Well if I was being honest, if it was that man in specific, I’m not sure if I would accept it. He was a real piece of work.”

“Oh...”

“But,” Devin continued, “I think if I got a call like that from someone else who did the same thing... I don’t know what I would do. That’s just me being honest, honey.”

“I... I understand. I don’t know if I could expect any other kind of answer,” Sa-Rang said.

“But hey, Sa-Rang?” Devin said, “I don’t know what you’re going through, but whatever it is, I think the important part of it is that you grow from it. If I did something horrible to someone, and I apologized to them, and they didn’t accept that apology, the next best thing I can do after that is keep on going and not let that one thing drag me down. Yeah, it’s still a part of me, and I might not be able to get rid of it, but I can choose to use it in a way that’s better than letting it stick to me and poison me.” He shrugged. “That’s just my random thought, on whatever. Relevant or not.”

Sa-Rang looked up at Devin. “Thank you Dev,” she said. “I think I just needed to hear another human say that.”

“Human?”

“Person,” Sa-Rang said. “You know what I mean.”

“I’m not sure that I do,” Devin said. “But you’re in my prayers, sweetie, and I’m hoping that you get some sleep next time I see you.”

“Yeah...” Sa-Rang said. “Me too.”

After my shift, Sa-Rang rushed straight to home without making a single stop, not sure if there was anything that she needed to pick up to restock the fridge or pantries or anything.

She opened the door, and Siofra was sitting there on the couch, legs crossed in a lotus position underneath her, reading book one in the Percy Jackson series.

“I did not know how to use the TV, so I thought I would get some reading done and see why you have read these books six times each,” Siofra said. “It is an enjoyable tale, even if the depictions of the gods and goddesses are highly inaccurate.”

Sa-Rang nodded. “Good. Nice.”

Siofra’s brow quirked. “Is something wrong, Sa-Rang?”

Sa-Rang shook her head. “No. Nothing’s wrong.” She took a step forward, pulling her phone out of her pocket. “I am ready to make the call.”


	7. The Call

Sa-Rang could still remember the taste of Carol Weber’s lips. She tasted like cherry soda.

She remembered a few of those kisses. More than a few of them. In the couch, in bed, meeting outside her apartment. She remembered walking into Carol’s bakery, ringing the bell, just to annoy her, and then leaning over the counter for a kiss, stepping on the tips of her toes just to reach her lips. Kisses in the bakery were the best. They had an aroma to them, of fresh bread and warm muffins. It was cozy. Carol was cozy.

She started to remember a few other things that she wasn’t so fond of.

Like how near the ugly end of the relationship, Sa-Rang could keep her phone flipped face down, turned off notifications for most of when she was around her, and had this habit of looking over her shoulder.

It was the most guilty she had ever felt, but looking back, it probably wasn’t guilt. It was fear. She knew what she was doing was wrong, but the guilt wasn’t enough to stop her from doing it. She was, however, afraid. Afraid of being found out, afraid of losing the nicest person she ever known, the most cozy relationship she had ever been in. She wanted to keep it, but... she couldn’t stop herself.

She could have, she realized this. She could have just stopped. She could have just never started.

Her fears were realized, all too soon, and she had lost everything she was afraid to lose. The warmth, the coziness, the cherry soda kisses. Carol. She had lost Carol...

  
Sa-Rang felt like she was being pulled in two different directions, and she wanted both of those directions to be far away from her phone.

She didn’t know where her confidence went, that she had built up on the way back home, and then let out when she walked through the door. She was so ready, but then she saw Carol’s name on her contacts and she had to set the phone back down on the coffee table. She stared at it and she didn’t say anything, her fingers were tapping restlessly on her leg.

“Are you alright?” Siofra asked.

“I think so. Or not. I don’t know...” Sa-Rang said. “I thought I was... I was ready to try, but... I don’t know if I can do this...”

Siofra pursed her lips. “Well... if you cannot, I will not force you to, and we can wait until you are emotionally ready,” she said.

“Don’t be so kind to me like that,” I said. “You saw what I did to Carol. You saw how it played out, and you saw how little thought I put into her or to what I did to her after we broke up. I’m the last one who you should be feeling sorry for right now.”

“Yeon Sa-Rang,” Siofra said, continuing with her habit of using Sa-Rang’s full name and nothing but her full name, “I am not sure if you realize this, but I am here for you. Because I care about what happens to you, and how you feel. I am your angel, and I want the best for you, and sometimes that means I have to show you a little sympathy, even if you were wrong, before.”

“Still... I was very wrong.”

“You were,” Siofra said, nodding. “But you can try to do a right by Carol, whether she accepts it or not.”

“Do you... do you think that she will?” Sa-Rang asked.

“I... do not know. First because I am not her angel, and. I have not watched over her nearly as much as I have you, and second because... well, it is because she does not have to accept it. As harsh as it might sound, you harmed her in a very grave way. She took it to heart, as I am sure anyone else would, and she probably carries a little of that pain along with her, still. She is under no real obligation to forgive you for anything that you did.”

“This is one hell of a pep talk, Siofra,” Sa-Rang said.

“I am not trying to give you a pep talk. I am telling you something that you need to hear. I think you should be prepared for what might happen.”

“And... what might happen?” Sa-Rang asked.

“I do not know. You will have to call and find out, but you do not need to do that right now, if you think that you are not ready for it.”

“I don’t think that I am...” Sa-Rang said, shoulders slumping. “But also... I don’t think that I’ll ever be.” She reached for the phone and picked it up. “Will you... will you be here?” She asked.

Siofra offered her hand and nodded. “I will be here for you, Yeon Sa-Rang.

Sa-Rang took Siofra’s hand, her skin was so incredibly soft and smooth that it was almost unbelievable, and she squeezed lightly. Sa-Rang would have tried thanking her, if it weren’t for the fact that she was the reason she was doing this in the first place.

She hit the call button. Her chest was pounding. She had the phone up to her ear, and a thousand thoughts started swirling in her head, hoping that she wouldn’t pick up, hoping it would go to voice mail, hoping that Carol might have changed her number since they broke up. She even hoped that Carol might even see her name and decide not to pick up, or just flat out deny the call.

She didn’t know what she would do, if that were the case. If she would call again, or even if that would be the right thing to do.

She didn’t have to wonder about that for too long because, as her worst fears were waiting on it, the phone was answered, and Sa-Rang heard Carol’s voice for the first time in a long time, saying, slowly, reluctantly, “Hello?”

“C—Carol,” Sa-Rang sputtered out. She squeezed Siofra’s hand harder and she floundered for something to say.

“Sa-Rang...” Carol said. Sa-Rang couldn’t quite make out what her tone meant, or if there was anything extra in there for her to actually read. Of course there was something under the surface, she would be kidding herself if she told herself that there wasn’t... she just wanted to know if it was anger.

Sa-Rang looked to Siofra, into her warm eyes. The naked angel nodded along and gave her a reassuring gaze that Sa-Rang took to mean that she was capable of getting through this, or at least that it might be over soon.

“Carol,” she said again, before her ex could ask her why she was calling so suddenly like this. “I, um... I... uh... I’m calling...” she swallowed, she closed her eyes, and she looked away from the angel. “I’m calling to...” she let out a shaky breath. “Carol, I need to apologize to you. For everything.”

“Oh... Sa-Rang, you really don’t have to do th—”

“Carol, please. I really do. I have to. I...” she inhaled. She could already feel herself wobbling on the tracks. She didn’t want to derail. She just had to keep moving forward. “I did... I did so much wrong by you, and I have no good reason or excuse for why I did it. I know I... I know I told you that I got scared and I panicked and, and... and a lot of other things but that wasn’t true. I know you know that wasn’t true. You know the truth, but I just need to admit it to you, okay? I’m impulsive and I’m cruel and I don’t think about how what I do effects the people close to me before I do it... and I’m sorry.”

Carol was quiet. She didn’t say anything.

So Sa-Rang continued. “You were... I don’t know what to say... you were special to me, Carol. Compared to everyone else that came before and everyone else that came since... you were special. You were the first person I thought that I could have a real future with and I... and I fucked that all up.” Sa-Rang realized that she was crying, now, and that she probably sounded a lot like she was crying. “And I’m not here to ask or beg for you back, but... but I care about you, Carol, and I... and I never really apologized for what I did. Not in any way that you deserved. And I still don’t think that I did. But I want to try... I want to do everything that I can to make this up to you, even if it’s just in a little way.”

Sa-Rang sniffed. “I’m so... so, sorry, Carol.”

Another pause. Sa-Rang was worried that Carol might have hung up on her.

Then she spoke. “Thank you, Sa-Rang,” she said. “I... forgive you.”

Sa-Rang let out a sad little gasp between sniffles. “You don’t. You don’t have to, what I did was horrible.”

“It... it was horrible. And it was horrible for a long time,” Carol said. “And hearing your voice again... it brought back a lot of pain. And I wasn’t sure if I wanted to listen to you or just hang up... but... but I can tell that you’re sorry. And that you’re trying to change... and I think that’s really good for you. I... I don’t know what it was, but... I don’t know, just... thank you for calling. Are you doing well, Sa-Rang?

Sa-Rang, still breathing heavily from the emotions, said, “Yes. Sort of. No.” Maybe that was what Carol wanted to hear. That she wasn’t doing too great. She wasn’t feeling so great. The weight of everything she had done, not just to Carol, but to everyone she had been unfaithful to, came crashing down at her, all at once, and she didn’t feel like she could carry it.

“I’m... I’m sorry to hear that Sa-Rang. Is it anything you want to talk about?” She asked.

Carol was so kind. She was so absurdly kind, and Sa-Rang didn’t feel like she deserved any of it.

“I— no. It’s good. I’m good. A lot is just... happening, all at the same time and...” she sighed. “I just really needed to say sorry.” I closed my eyes and shook my head, my hand squeezed Siofra’s again. “H—how is the bakery?” She asked.

“It’s doing well. Business is good,” Carol said.

“That’s good... that’s... Carol... if you don’t want to make small talk with me, then I would totally understand it if you just hung up.”

“Stop beating yourself up, Sa-Rang,” Carol said. “I know you want. To apologize but... you can’t do that by just falling apart.”

”Okay... I’m sorry...”

”Stop apologizing,” Carol said. “I... look, Sa-Rang, I know that this might not be... a good idea, but would you like to come down to the bakery? Tomorrow?”

Sa-Rang swallowed. “I...” she looked to Siofra, and the angel nodded. “I can. S—same place?”

”Yes. Same place,” Carol said.

”I... I can be there after work. Same time.”

”I’ll... I’ll be waiting for you,” Carol said.

”Okay...”

”Goodbye, Sa-Rang.”

”Goodbye,” Sa-Rang said.

They hung up. She let go of Siofra’s hand and she set the phone down.

She looked over to Siofra, and she started crying harder.

”It’s okay,” Siofra said. “You did well, Yeon Sa-Rang.” She opened her arms, and to Sa-Rang’s own surprise, she took the embrace, resting her head on the angel’s soft chest and cried. It was in relief... mostly. But... it was hard to look back on where her life was and see that it had moved on without her. Moved away from her. It was hard to hear Carol’s voice again, it was hard to hear her forgive her and think that maybe she wasn’t being honest... and it was hard to think she would be meeting her again soon. Seeing her again in her cozy, warm bakery, with the scent of bread and muffins in the air, where her cherry soda flavored lips tasted the best...


	8. Could Be

She felt better after the cry, but she also felt more sensitive. All of her feelings were more tender.

“You did a good thing.” Siofra said. They were at the table, sitting across from each other. Sa-Rang was slumped slightly forward like she could feel the weight of the new bags under her eyes.

She felt cold. She wanted to snuggle up underneath a blanket. She wanted to wrap herself inside of a blanket until there was nothing left of her, with only the blanket remaining.

“I don’t think I’m ready to talk to her tomorrow,” she said. Her voice was still raw. “Not if just talking to her on the phone felt like this.”

“You made a commitment, Yeon Sa-Rang,” Siofra said. “Those are important to your reformation, considering how many commitments you have broken in the past.”

“You know, angel, I could use a little break from all of my faults being thrown at me for the moment.”

Siofra nodded. “I will give you that break,” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang drank some coffee.

“Are you sure that that is the right thing to drink?” Siofra asked.

“What? Why?”

“Not only does it taste bad, but it will only make you feel even more tense, and keep you awake longer than you need to be,” Siofra said.

“It will help me calm down, I swear,” Sa-Rang said.

“I do not believe you,” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang shook her head. “It’s because I’m used to it. I would be more nervous if I didn’t drink enough caffein.”

“That would suggest that you are an addict,” Siofra said. “Maybe that is something else that we will need to put some work into in the future.”

“Siofra, I swear to god, if you try and take my coffee away from me, I will never listen to another thing that you tell me and you will never get your wings or whatever It’s A Wonderful Life kind of bullshit you’re trying to do.”

Siofra blinked. “I suppose that that is something that can be moved to the back of the list.”

“How about the ‘Never’ side of the list?” Sa-Rang said pointedly.

Siofra hummed. “I also have one more thing to say to you before tomorrow,” Siofra said.

Sa-Rang didn’t like the sound of that. “What is it?”

“I just felt the need to remind you that you and I have both made a commitment to treat our relationship as if it were monogamous, and if you were to break with that monogamy, that it would be as if you had done so to a romantic relationship, and we will have both taken a massive step back in your progress.”

“Why... why are you telling me this?”

“Surely you understand why,” Siofra said. “You still have feelings for Carol, and from what I understand, she is currently available, and at the very least willing to hear from you in spite of how your relationship had ended. I think it would be natural for to want to take comfort by heading back into that relationship. In spite of everything, it was still a comfortable place in your life.”

“I’m... I’m not getting back together with her, Siofra. That ship has long sailed. We both moved on. It’s... nothing. There’s nothing left there.”

“They way you say that makes it sound like you wish that there was still something there,” Siofra said. “I know it’s easy to forget, but I know you well, Sa-Rang. I know you better than anyone.”

“But I still know myself, and I’m telling you that that’s not going to happen. Our... our weird whatever it is that we have here won’t be disturbed, I promise.”

“I believe you,” Siofra said. Sa-Rang really wasn’t sure if the naked angel actually did, just based off the way that she said it, but... maybe she was just hearing things, raw from the call and sensitive to negative thoughts and feelings.

Still, she couldn’t imagine ever getting back together with Carol... except for the fact that she did imagine it, a few times before, in some pretty deep detail. Among all the others that she had ruined the relationships of, Carol was the easiest one to picture a nonexistent future with. She was the most pleasant for Sa-Rang to drop her imaginary self into some domestic situation a decade along the line when they were both older and softer and cozier. It was usually just the best parts of when they were dating but they were just so much more familiar with each other. They had so much more experience with each other. It was no surprise then that every time that Sa-Rang stepped out of these fantasies, it was always with an incredible melancholy that she would never be able to get there with her.

She didn’t really feel all that _bad_ about it until now.

Maybe it just felt more real. She couldn’t believe that it had taken this long. Well, she could believe it, she guessed. She was so messed up inside she actually got her divine intervention knocking on her door and helping her get her shit together.

“Do you want to watch something on the television?” Siofra asked.

“Does that mean you want to watch something, angel?”

“I would not be averse if there was something you wanted to play for me to experience for the first time again,” she said.

“I’m going to have to teach you how to use the remote, aren’t I?” Sa-Rang asked.

“I think I would greatly appreciate that.”

“Alright... I’m going to show you Sherlock next,” Sa-Rang said, sitting on the couch and turning on the TV. “You’re going to have opinion, and then that opinion is going to change drastically by the time that you finish.”

She started it. Siofra, naturally, had questions, and the impulse to keep on asking them during the show. “Are they gay? Are they gay for each other? Why aren’t they gay for each other? Will they ever become gay for each other? Why would the creators of this show imply so heavily that they would be gay towards each other if they do not intend for them to ever develop a romantic relationship with each other?”

They finished the first season and Sa-Rang immediately yawned. She was ready for sleep.

“Yeon Sa-Rang?” Siofra asked.

“Yes?”

“Would you like to sleep in the same bed?”

Sa-Rang’s head prevented her from saying anything at that.

“Is something wrong?”

Sa-Rang immediately remembered that Siofra was not only extremely naked, but also so incredibly _distractingly_ naked that any time she was made aware of it she felt the need to stare shamelessly and blush furiously. How did she ever get to any point where this wasn’t... where she didn’t just register the fact that she was... so goddamn beautiful that it was hard to look at sometimes.

“Yeon Sa-Rang? Are you okay? You have stopped talking.”

Sa-Rang swallowed. “I’m... what?”

“What do you mean?”

“What did you ask?”

“I had just asked if you would want for us to both sleep on the same bed tonight,” Siofra said.

So Sa-Rang hadn’t misheard her.

“Oh... but why?” Sa-Rang said, trying very hard to sound calm, but feeling very much less than calm.

“I understand that you are going through some very significant amounts of emotional stress. I think it might help you if you had someone with you tonight.”

Sa-Rang swallowed. “I... thank you, Siofra, but I’m good, really. I’ll... I’ll be able to sleep.”

“Are you sure?”

Sa-Rang nodded. “I am. I’ll... I’ll be okay. Watching Sherlock with you really helped me.”

“It was a very interesting show, even if it does only make sense in its own universe.”

“Don’t worry... it stops doing that, too,” Sa-Rang said. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” Siofra said, laying on the couch after Sa-Rang stood up. Sa-Rang looked at her and simply the way that she was able to lay upon that couch and making everything surrounding her look like a work of art... she thought maybe she should reconsider letting her sleep in her bed.

She stopped herself from opening her mouth to call her over. This was a bad idea. If she let this happen, it wouldn’t lead to anything good. Even if it was with an angel that knew better...

But she did know better... it wouldn’t be such a bad thing just to lie beside her, would it?

Knowing herself, it probably would be, but she would do it anyways, which meant that she should definitely not submit to the temptation.

But she was offering...

“Why are you just standing there and looking down at me?” Siofra asked.

“Nothing. No reason. Goodnight,” Sa-Rang said, snapping out of wherever she was trapped and turning around, rushing to her room.

Under the covers, she stared up at the ceiling she thought about how she was missing an incredible opportunity. A beautiful, beautiful opportunity.

She had to put it behind her and get some sleep.

Carol was tomorrow.

And when Sa-Rang closed her eyes, she was back to those old fantasies of her and Carol, in some kind of future, snuggled together on the sofa and just... being happy.

In a lot of ways, it was the same kind of fantasy that she usually had. Exactly the same. It was a nice thing to think about until she took too many steps backward and it started to feel bad all over again.

Except this time, it felt worse the closer she was to it, and the further she got from her fantasy, the closer she got to making a revelation.

Then there it was. It came to her.

For the first time since they broke up, she finally had a chance at living this fantasy. It sent a rush of excitement through her. This was... this was incredible news. Everything felt possible.

And then she remembered Siofra, and she was frozen in her thoughts.

 _Oh... I’m in trouble..._ she thought, back to staring up at the ceiling. _what am I going to do tomorrow?_ she asked herself. She asked herself this a few times, until her eyes grew heavy, and she dozed off without an answer.


	9. Familiar

Her heart was pounding while she was at work. Siofra had reassured her that things were going to go fine, hands on her shoulder as Sa-Rang tried to keep her eyes off of the angel’s chest.

As was becoming a habit, Devin asked if she was doing alright, and she lied and said that she was, elaborated that she just had a lot to do, later, and didn’t bother to say what it was she was going to be doing, exactly. Not that she was going to be meeting with someone and certainly not who it was she was going to meet with, but given their last conversation, he could probably make an informed guess.

When she clocked out, she walked back to her apartment, showered and got dressed, all while Siofra sat mostly still and watched the Marvel Cinematic Universe in order on Disney+, currently on the first Captain America.

“The ordering of these films are beyond confusing, even with the list you wrote out for me,” Siofra said. “Why can’t they just number these in the proper sequence?”

“It makes sense later on,” Sa-Rang lied, putting on her shoes and grabbing her purse. She looked over to Siofra, and she tried to put it in her head that she was pretending to date the angel, that she was in a committed, loving relationship with her that she wouldn’t dare risk breaking this imaginary relationship to get back together with one of her exes.

Or would she...

No, she wouldn’t. She couldn’t. Not for the sake of the angel and her getting back to heaven.

“Why are you staring at me for so long?” Siofra asked.

“I’m trying to remember something.”

“Is it masturbatory?”

Sa-Rang looked up at the ceiling. “God, Siofra, not everything I do has to do with... with that,” she said.

“But it frequently does,” Siofra said.

“Whatever. Goodbye,” Sa-Rang said, turning and heading for the door, the image of the angel in her head as she walked away.

It was, admittedly, going to be a lot easier to remember her as her better half if she was able to stir up some strong, lustful feelings. It wasn’t hard to manage, considering it was honestly difficult for Sa-Rang to picture her without getting a little hot. Or a lot hot.

She left and she closed the door behind her, stepping back and leaning against it, looking up and wondering what she was going to do, how she was going to do it. If she should just... not. Flaking would be entirely within her bad character, but it would also be just another thing that would prevent not only her recovery, but Siofra’s as well. She had to go through with this, and she had to get things right.

She... didn’t think she was capable of doing the right thing. Not here, not like this. She thought that, even if this went as well as it possibly could, the only thing she would be able to do is apologize and to hopelessly catch feels for Carol all over again. This was too much and she could barely deal with it, but she made her promises, not only to Siofra, but also to Carol. Beyond just her obligations to Siofra, if she somehow managed to disappoint Carol even more than she already had, it would be something that would follow her around and eat at her, now that she was capable of feeling guilt for longer than five seconds.

She didn’t want to make this worse...

But then again... that could be exactly what she does if she was put face to face with Carol, and in more ways than just accidentally say something wrong. She could drag Carol into her problems all over again.

This was a bad idea...

But she was going to go through with it, anyways. She walked away from the door and reached for her phone, intending to check the directions back to Carol’s bakery, but once her hand touched it in her purse, she had wanted to see if she still remembered it.

It turned out she did. By heart.

She entered the bakery, and it smelled exactly the way that she remembered it, with the added feature of making her kind of hurt inside. She looked at her feet as she moved in, not wanting to look through the glass door and see Carol behind the counter until she was inside.

Once inside, she looked, and... there she was. She looked... different, but still very much familiar. Rosy cheeks, blonde hair now cut in a bob and dyed brown at the roots, round glasses, red lips.

She kind of hurt to look at, seeing her, remembering how they had last left off, remembering the tears, mostly Carol’s in a way that looking back at in in hindsight made Sa-Rang feel like a monster.

What was worse —what was the absolute worst feeling thing, was that Carol smiled at her. Like things were better, after all that’s happened, and after all the nothing in between.

Sa-Rang smiled back, or at least tried to. She shuffled over to her and on the way, the few steps it took to get to the counter devoted to thinking of what she should say.

“Hey,” Carol said.

Hello might be a good idea, Sa-Rang thought. “Hello,” she said, waving weakly. “It’s been... it’s been a long time, Carol,” she said, feeling weird to say her name after all this time of avoiding even thinking about it, and weirder still to say it to her face.

“I guess it has been,” Carol said. Her voice was so soft. She still sounded so caring.

Sa-Rang wondered if her lips still tasted like cherry soda...

No. She shouldn’t. She wasn’t going to get the chance. She wasn’t going to let herself get even close to that chance.

Carol came out from behind the counter and took Sa-Rang over to the table by the window, where they sat across from each other. Sa-Rang remembered quite a few dates that started at this table. She was glad to see that it was still here, still intact, nothing moved.

Like walking into her past again...

“How have you been?” Carol asked.

Sa-Rang opened her mouth. She didn’t know how to answer that. There was no way that she could answer that honestly, of course: ‘I had an affair with my sister’s husband, she found out, they’re separating, so now an extremely naked angel decided that I’m fucking up too often so she dropped down and started binging shows and movies on my couch.’

“I’m doing well... well, okay. I mean... things have been better, but...” Sa-Rang trailed off, unsure of where she was going. “I’m sorry, Carol. For everything. For what I did and for hitting you up yesterday, it’s just that... I fucked up and it’s getting harder for me to move on from that.”

“Sa-Rang, it’s... I told you that I forgive you,” Carol said, her hand reaching and resting on the table. “I’m not mad any more. I’ve moved on.”

And here Sa-Rang was dragging her back in...

“I’m sorry. I mean... for that. I’m... not in my element right now.”

“I don’t think that I am, either,” Carol said with a small laugh. A very lovely laugh, Sa-Rang had almost forgotten what it sounded like. It was nice to hear again, and not just because it took a lot of the edge off of this awkward conversation.

“I’ll be honest,” Sa-Rang said. “I have no idea how to do any of this.”

“That makes two of us,” Carol said. “Well, how about for what you’ve been doing since... since.”

“I’ve been working at the book shop. I’ve been... trying to write, but that hasn’t really gone too extremely well...” _I have a girlfriend now. She never wears clothes and she has a heavenly body_. “Not much else, actually. I guess I’ve kind of just been standing still.” She didn’t want to mention any of the other relationships she has had since then, or the completely predictable ways that they had all fallen apart.

“That’s okay,” Carol said. “It’s been kind of the same for me, too, I guess. The bakery’s been doing good, at least. Added some things to the menu...”

At this point, they had probably both realized how little they were able to say to each other. How awkward any direction of conversation could be.

“I’m just... glad you’re doing well,” Sa-Rang finally said.

“I... it’s okay, Sa-Rang. I mean... I mean of course I’m okay. You didn’t... break me, or anything. You hurt me, we broke up, I was hurt for a bit longer than that, and I moved on. It’s... nothing that serious anymore.”

Sa-Rang paused at those words, or rather, she had been frozen. She recognized the tone. Slightly annoyed, from whenever Sa-Rang had done something wrong and Carol wanted to make sure that she knew that she was annoyed, but didn’t want to outright say it.

Sa-Rang understood what she was saying completely, though. ‘ _Get over yourself_.’

And until she heard her speak like that, Sa-Rang barely heard herself speaking, or thinking. Acting like what she had the power to break one of her lovers by cheating and leaving. Yeah, it was a shitty thing to do, but...

But maybe she was giving herself a bit too much credit.

“R—right,” Sa-Rang said. “You’re right, I’m just—” she was going to say that she was in a “weird place,” but she also didn’t want to make too many excuses.

Well, actually, she wanted to make as many excuses as she possibly could, but... she also knew that it was the wrong thing to do. Siofra had told her that she needed to own up to her mistakes, and in spite of how often she did the wrong thing, she generally knew what doing that meant.

“I... appreciate you reaching out, though. I’ve kind of wanted to do the same but... I just never was able to, I guess,” Carol said, a more quiet voice. Almost apologetic, in a way that made Sa-Rang feel bad that she had let it come to her sounding like that.

“It’s... tough to dig up the past, I guess,” Sa-Rang said. “It took a lot of hyping up to be able to pick up the phone. And a lot of panic, too, I guess, but,” _but I was never good at looking back at the things that I’ve fucked up_ , “but I’m... glad that I did. It feels really good to see you again. To be back in this cafe. Maybe this means I can start getting the good pastries again. I’ve been missing your chocolate croissants.”

Carol smiled. “Sa-Rang,” she said in a fake chastising tone, “you didn’t hit me up just so you could get back to my chocolate croissants and cheese danishes, did you?”

Sa-Rang smiled, easily for once. “It... might have had something to do with it...” she said.

They both laughed. This prompted Carol to get up and grab a selection of pastries to place on the table, which Sa-Rang shamelessly went in on, pulled deep into the past, and the best parts of it, too.

Talking was easier from here on. They caught up, for real this time, talking about the little details and the friends on both sides that they missed, pieces of the past that didn’t hurt so much any more with the benefit of an apple fritter in your mouth.

It felt right, for Sa-Rang to be here. Natural to talk to Carol again.

Almost to whole hours passed without either of them realizing it. Not until it was dark out and they had finally run out of things to say.

”Well, I um... I guess I should start heading home,” Sa-Rang said.

”And I guess I should close up shop,” said Carol. “It was... nice seeing you again, Sa-Rang.”

”And it was incredible to see you again, too,” Sa-Rang said, and they both hugged, she took in Carol’s scent and a dozen emotions swirling underneath the surface finally broke through. They stepped away from each other and smiled, and without thinking, Sa-Rang said, “can I... call you again?” She asked.

Carol smiled. “Any time... and for any reason,” she said.

They kissed on the cheek and parted ways. Out the door, Sa-Rang looked up and she smiled at the sky.

”Ah, fuck... I am in so much trouble,” she said, still smiling, walking on and barely caring at the moment.

Back to the apartment... where she’d tell a few truths and some lies to Siofra.


End file.
